Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ office is involved in wide-ranging negotiations with the Broncos over Burnham Yard, a state-owned property that is considered a potential site for a new stadium, The Denver Post has confirmed.
Two people with direct knowledge of the ongoing stadium discussions, which include several entities, confirmed the involvement of the governor’s office to The Post. The 58-acre former rail yard, situated east of Interstate 25 and mostly north of Sixth Avenue, is among a handful of sites along the Front Range the Broncos are considering for a potential new stadium.
And the state is already planning to sell it, after the Colorado Department of Transportation determined it doesn’t need the site — which it purchased four years ago for $50 million.
Shelby Wieman, a spokeswoman for Polis, did not respond when directly asked to confirm the involvement of Polis or his advisers in the negotiations.
“The Governor is committed to keeping the Denver Broncos in Colorado, and hopefully in Denver,” she wrote in an email to The Post earlier this week. “Therefore, we support efforts to ensure Colorado remains the home of our Super Bowl champion team.”
The Broncos declined to confirm any conversations directly with the governor’s office, but a team spokesman said team executives “continue to productively engage with key stakeholders across all potential options being explored.”
The Broncos would have several other major hurdles to pass to solidify a future stadium in the Burnham Yard area.
Club executives, including president Damani Leech and general counsel Tim Aragon, have also been in consistent communication with Denver Water for more than a year, The Post reported this week. The utility’s administrative building sits at the north end of an approximately 36-acre campus situated just west of Burnham Yard.
Denver Water confirmed that it’s in talks with the Broncos, but it would not say whether selling some or all of the campus to the club was on the table. The public utility’s conversations with the Broncos have regularly included Mayor Mike Johnston’s chief projects officer, Bill Mosher, representatives from commercial real estate and construction firms, and the law firm Hogan Lovells, according to emails obtained by The Post.
Another key piece to the land puzzle is SRM Concrete, a sizable plant wedged between Burnham Yard and Denver Water on the north end. Employees on site referred The Post to the company’s corporate owners, who did not respond to a request for comment.
Elected officials often participate in stadium negotiations in an effort to keep professional teams in their communities, and the state’s ownership of Burnham Yard makes Polis’ involvement unsurprising. Some cities and states have offered major public resources to help finance stadiums, but those tactics have become controversial, as most economists agree that taxpayers rarely receive much return on those investments.
“It’s very common to have politicians involved (in stadium development discussions), kind of like it’s normal to have organized crime involved in casinos,” said J.C. Bradbury, an economics professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia whose research focuses on sports economics and stadium development. “Yes, it’s common, but that doesn’t mean it’s desirable.”
Burnham Yard, a 58-acre plot of land located near downtown Denver, shown on Wednesday, December 4, 2024. It has emerged as a potential site for a new Denver Broncos stadium. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)The governor’s office didn’t provide any details about what a possible deal for Burnham Yard could include.
Bradbury said that in deals elsewhere, local governments and elected officials have helped facilitate sales or transfers of government-owned land to sports teams. He was sharply critical of any government subsidy or financing involved in stadium development.
For several months, a group of LLCs that appear to be backed by a single buyer have been purchasing land — more than $150 million worth — around Burnham Yard. The Post has not independently confirmed that the Broncos are the buyer, though BusinessDenver cited a source with knowledge of the deals who ties the club to the purchases.
Burnham Yard itself is owned by an investment arm of CDOT.
If CDOT does sell the site to the Broncos and the Walton-Penner Family Ownership group, it could allow the group to build a stadium there, moving the team from the Mile High site it currently occupies at Empower Field for the first time in franchise history. It could also build a neighboring entertainment district.
The site is a former Union Pacific rail maintenance yard that the state purchased in 2021. Originally, CDOT planned to use the site to help expand I-25 nearby — by consolidating rail lines away from the highway — as well as to provide more space for light rail and passenger rail service through the corridor.
However, those plans have shifted. The state decided instead to look at selling the parcel with the aim of having it developed in another way.
Enter the Broncos.
The club has been studying options on the stadium front since the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group purchased the team in August 2022.
Besides looking at Burnham Yard, CEO and owner Greg Penner confirmed earlier this spring that the Broncos had also been in talks with officials in Lone Tree and Aurora about the possibility of building a new stadium in the suburbs. He also maintained that the team could stay at Mile High.
A Denver city spokesman told The Post in a recent statement that it “is committed to ensuring that the Broncos remain in Denver, where they have long been a cornerstone of civic pride and community spirit.”
The pull of building in a dense urban area is considerable for teams, too, if such a project is feasible.
“Especially if you’re trying to get somewhere close to the city, there aren’t big sites sitting around for a venue like this that don’t have some kind of hair on them,” Erin Talkington, managing director of RCLCO, told The Post last year. The real estate advisory firm’s work includes consulting for sports ownership groups and municipalities on major development projects.
That describes Burnham Yard almost exactly.
“Big projects take a long time to come to fruition, and when you add in a venue component to it, they take even longer,” Talkington said about venue-anchored entertainment districts generally. “And so you start even earlier in terms of thinking, ‘What could this be? Where could it go? What does it take to get it there?’ “
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