The Broncos have identified the location they hope to call home for generations to come.
Burnham Yard, the former railyard nestled east of Interstate 25 and north of 6th Avenue, is the franchise’s preferred site for a new stadium, the club announced Tuesday morning while outlining an unprecedented, privately financed vision for a stadium and adjoining mixed-use entertainment district.
“We couldn’t be more excited,” Broncos CEO and owner Greg Penner said in an exclusive interview with The Denver Post on Tuesday. “We had communication with the whole ownership group yesterday and everybody’s been thinking about this and had it on their minds since we purchased the team.
“It’s one step, but it’s an historic day as we announce this. It really gets us on track to look at a new stadium and mixed-use development that’s going to be a huge positive for our fans, the city and the state.”
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The club has reached conceptual agreements to purchase the 58-acre railyard from the state, along with 25 acres on the south end of Denver Water’s campus to the West of the yard. Additional private real estate acquisitions made over the past year have brought the total footprint to more than 100 acres, and the team is currently exploring additional real estate in the area.
The Broncos did not comment on the total cost of the land, construction and work beyond calling it a multibillion dollar private investment, but the final price tag is expected to be at least $4 billion and potentially considerably more. The team and city say no new tax dollars will be involved in the plan and the entities are in the process of exploring city-led infrastructure improvements in the area as well as the possibility of urban renewal tax credits.
“From Day 1 in our discussions with the city and state, we all said that was our objective going in was to figure out how to do this with no new taxes,” Penner said.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston told The Post in an exclusive interview that the funding framework is “an incredible deal for the city.”
“Right from the start the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group made it clear that they were not going to be seeking a publicly financed stadium,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis told The Post. “And I said, ‘We appreciate that because those have a checkered track record.’ Sometimes they fail at the ballot box and people don’t feel good about it. It can turn a town against a team. The Penners said right away that they were going to do private investment.
“We said ‘Great. How can we help?’”
Penner said the Broncos are in the preliminary stages of stadium design, but the initial plan is to build a stadium that has a retractable roof and natural grass surface.
“We wanted something that is true to our roots here and looked at domed stadiums as an option, but just thought that wouldn’t enable us to take advantage of Colorado sunsets and Mile High views and playing in the elements if we choose to,” Penner said. “That being said, we really like the idea of a retractable roof that allows us to have events year-round, and if weather is to a degree we want to close the roof, we can do that.”
The location is just a stone’s throw south of the team’s current site at Mile High but making the move would represent a seismic shift for a franchise that’s known one home since arriving in Denver in 1960.
For all of the opportunities the defunct railyard presents, however, there are also complications that make this far from a done deal. Hence the announcement that this is merely a preferred location.
After more than a year of negotiations with the mayor’s office, governor’s office, city council, CDOT, Denver Water and other stakeholders, the franchise has enough confidence to make its aspirations public. However, there’s still a lot of work to be done before shovels hit the dirt.
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“The most specific thing is the community benefits agreement, which we’ll start working on right away,” Penner said. “That will be in conjunction with city council, neighborhood groups and others. We’ll work closely with them to come up with something that works for all those neighborhoods and the surrounding areas. We want to go in the right way and have a really positive relationship in that area.
“We think this can be highly additive to their every-day living.”
There are myriad community, environmental and zoning processes to work through. There are neighborhood groups to engage, councils and commissions to appease. In addition, there are still parcels of land in the area the team is working to acquire, including a concrete plant between Burnham Yard and Denver Water.
But the opportunity, all involved say, is well worth the work already done and the challenges still ahead.
“This is three monumental wins for the city all in the same day,” Johnston said, noting the Broncos staying in central Denver, the development of an abandoned railyard into an activated neighborhood and the long-term potential for the city to redevelop the existing 80 acres at Mile High in the future. “We couldn’t be more excited.”
“We fell in love”
Penner has fielded stadium questions since his first day on the job in August 2022, and the club has been studying a potential move since just about then.
All along, the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group has publicly kept its options open and privately aimed to stay in Denver proper, whether at their current Mile High site or somewhere else in the city.
There are, however, few locations that check enough boxes in terms of acreage and availability.
Enter Burnham Yard.
The state acquired the 58-acre railyard in 2020 with an eye toward a public-private development project of some kind. The Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group acquired the Broncos in August 2022 and not long after began looking into the possibility of a new stadium.
“It really is one of the last remaining in-fill parcels in Central Denver, so the interest was obvious. It has huge potential,” Polis said. “It’s a catalyst for the region because of its accessibility via light rail, via rail, via road.”
The governor’s office took Broncos ownership to the site to see Burnham in February 2023, and it quickly became a possibility.
“We fell in love with it almost right away,” Penner said. “It’s so unique — the fact that it’s so close to Mile High, the proximity to downtown, access to I-25 and rail, and then we just loved the historic nature of the site given the importance of the railyard and the rail in Colorado’s history.
“It’s a more challenging site in some ways, but we think it creates an opportunity to create something special.”
The design remains in preliminary stages, but the Broncos are exploring keeping some of the existing buildings on the site in place and plan to use the history of the site as the bones on which to build. That includes likely using the Diesel Locomotive Shop in some sort of capacity.
“The Broncos have been, since Day 1 of the franchise, an important fabric and part of the community in Denver,” Penner said. “Finding a site of that size that we could weave into the downtown area and all that just was incredibly unique, combined with the historic nature of the site.
“It sounds easier to go buy some farmland out in the middle of nowhere and create something special, but it’s actually quite hard because what do you draw from the start? In this case, we have the bones of the old railyard and a couple of buildings and a unique site that we think enables us to create something unique and special, both with the stadium and the mixed-use development around it.”
The Broncos also engaged in conversations over the past year-plus with Lone Tree’s mayor and the Douglas County Commissioners, along with Aurora’s economic development group and private land holders in both cities. The conversations with Lone Tree went far further than with Aurora.
“They’ve known that if we could get something done in Denver, that was likely the option we’d pursue,” Penner said. “But we’ve been really serious about looking at other options as well if we couldn’t find something that worked.
“The process was really good and we’ve informed them of our decision at this point, but we’ll still stay in contact.”
Mixed use district
The Broncos have spent years touring entertainment districts around the country, including a couple in Atlanta — The Battery around the Atlanta Braves’ stadium and Centennial Yards, a new project downtown.
“We haven’t seen something that’s exactly what we want to do because we’ll create something that’s unique to this market and both what’s interesting to our fans but also what’s interesting to the community on a year-round basis.
“It’ll be a mix of housing, office, retail, entertainment. The goal is to create something that is active on gameday but also the rest of the year.”
Part of the Broncos’ community benefits analysis and the upcoming conversations with community groups will center on exactly what the district looks like. The city, Johnston says, is committed to help improve roads, sidewalks and transit options in the area.
“I couldn’t be more grateful for the way the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group has approached this,” the mayor said. “They really see themselves as community partners who want to help transform for the better the city for the next 50 years, and I think this project has a unique chance to do that.”
Stadium considerations
The Broncos have not yet done advanced renderings of the stadium or moved into the finer details of design, but the retractable roof will put Denver in position to land marquee events like the Super Bowl, Final Fours and an expanded series of concerts.
“This 3x’s the economic impact of a facility like Mile High,” Johnston said.
Penner said the club’s made it a priority to play on a natural grass surface in the future and that a retractable roof can give the stadium the ability to primarily continue playing football outside while preserving nearly every benefit of a domed stadium.
“It allows us to add all the modern amenities that fans want,” Penner said. “Expectations have just changed over the past 10-15 years with these newer stadiums that have been built. We’ll be able to provide all those things as well from different types of seating — GA, premier, clubs, great F&B.
“It will have all the bells and whistles.”
Community impact
Much of the next phase of the process from here is about engaging communities adjacent to Burnham Yard, including La Alma/Lincoln Park.
“We’re going to be open and transparent about what we’re trying to do and we want their input,” Penner said. “We think we’ve got some interesting ideas to think about with access in that area and improving — in conjunction with the city and state — roads and trail access, obviously there’s transit there. We think these conversations we’re going to have with these neighborhood groups, that they’ll end up looking at this as a real positive for their area.”
Polis said part of the plan includes expanding Front Range rail access to help make it easy for fans and people from Fort Collins and Colorado Springs to get right to the area via train.
Johnston said part of the process includes ensuring that the required minimums for affordable housing are met and that he’s hopeful the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group will go “above and beyond” the standard 10-12%, noting the River Mile development plan around Ball Arena is in the 18% range.
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Another element of the deal is moving some of Denver Water’s operations while keeping its administration building and about half its work force on the current site.
The city negotiated deals for properties at 40th and Clayton in North Denver along with smaller properties — one directly north of the current spot and one near Mile High. The Broncos agreed to pay the full cost of acquiring those properties and all relocation, construction and associated costs. The full price tag on that move is not yet clear, but Denver Water says the deal was “accomplished in a manner that complies with the Denver Charter and Denver Water’s covenants with its bond holders.”
“It’s a perfect realization of the vision (Denver Water) CEO Alan Salazar has for where Denver Water goes,” Johnston said.
The eventual move also means the 80 acres at the current site will revert back to the city, which Johnston said provides a “once-in-a-century opportunity” for development there, too.
“This is why I fought so hard to make sure this got done,” Johnston said. “When will you ever get 80 acres of central Denver back, that the city owns, to be able to completely redevelop with community voice? That is unheard of.”
In the meantime, of course, work begins right away on moving the Burnham Yard project forward.
“I think the public will fall in love with the Burnham Yard site just like we did and just like the Broncos did,” Polis said. “You can see the potential of what will be built there and what it means for fans. It’s just incredibly exciting and I can’t wait for the next few years.”
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