When 75,000 people descend from all points of the Front Range and beyond for Denver’s regular-season finale against Kansas City on Sunday, they will congregate in the only spot professional football in Colorado has ever known.
The building’s changed, but the Broncos have played at the same dot on the map since joining the AFL in 1960.
The question of whether the Broncos remain at Mile High beyond the next few years remains an open one. The franchise is moving steadily toward an inflection point — the end of its lease with the Metropolitan Football Stadium District, which runs through 2030 — and the decision of whether to stay and renovate, stay and rebuild or move elsewhere in the Denver area is one that takes years to unravel.
The Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group has been actively exploring that question and taking steps toward answering it since purchasing the franchise in August 2022. They’ve toured numerous stadiums and entertainment districts around the country, put about $100 million in upgrades into Empower Field, studied the renovation possibilities and solicited considerable fan feedback. They’ve paused any forward movement on a development plan with the MFSD.
They’ve undoubtedly considered where else in and around the metro might work as a future home.
Broncos Chief Communications Officer Patrick Smyth told The Denver Post that no decision has been made on the future of the stadium and that “our organization is continuing to carefully evaluate all options as part of a comprehensive and long-term process.”
Given a deadline is looming on the horizon — even one as far out as six years — some form of action is assured. And when modern-era ownership groups enter that phase in the proceedings, the questions almost always center on both the venue and what goes around it.
“When you’re making this decision, if you’re choosing between this set of options that includes your existing venue, then real estate becomes a factor in that decision,” said Erin Talkington, the managing director of RCLCo, a real estate advisory firm whose work includes consulting for sports ownership groups and municipalities on major development projects. “But I don’t think I’ve ever seen it be the only factor or the driving factor. The core business is the driving factor, and then real estate is one of those things that when you get it down to two or three options, then you’re like, ‘Well, how do we really want to think through this? What is the real opportunity?’”
Around the NFL, recent stadium builds and announced projects typically include adjacent real estate development, as do other professional venues held up widely as models like the Braves’ The Battery in the Atlanta suburbs. Some, like SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, are entirely privately funded. Most, including NFL clubs moving forward with stadium builds in Buffalo, N.Y., and Tennessee and a proposal in Cleveland, have differing forms of public-private partnerships.
A view of SoFi Stadium before a game between the Chicago Bears and the Los Angeles Rams on Sept. 12, 2021, in Inglewood, Calif. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
The $tadium Game
Part I: Amid another nationwide stadium boom, will Broncos build new home to land what Rockies have and what Nuggets, Avs are getting?
Part II: Is Coors Field the model for publicly financed stadium success? How the Monforts struck gold in LoDo.
Part III: Ball Arena was always window into downtown Denver land development for Stan Kroenke
Part IV: Will Broncos build new stadium? Inside the what, where and when that guides team decision-making
Nearly all of them landed on developing a district, a block or an entire neighborhood.
“The reality is these ownership groups have become more sophisticated, and team ownership is that much more expensive,” Edwin Draughan, a director and partner at Park Lane, a sports-focused investment bank, told The Post. “In order to really get that return, you’re going to have to have some additional, ancillary real estate component to really make it pencil out. That’s where you’re seeing, I’m not saying a huge shift, but a change in business-minded ownership groups.”
The Broncos ownership group is certainly business-minded. CEO and controlling owner Greg Penner is the chairman of Walmart’s board of directors, and the retail giant is the family business of Carrie Walton Penner and her father, Rob Walton.
They’ve toured stadiums and arenas around the country and they’ve also seen districts like The Battery.
Some districts have been built around existing venues while others, like The Battery and the Chase Center in San Francisco, have been part of new builds.
So the question in Denver is less about whether a real estate play is part of the Broncos’ future and more about where that future will be: Mile High? Or somewhere else?
More than a stadium
The Broncos say they are happy with Empower Field.
The updates over the past two years, fan survey results say, have been popular.
The stadium itself opened a little more than 23 years ago.
A major facelift to modernize it and make it a forward-thinking, revenue-generating machine for decades to come, though, would likely be a difficult task. In fact, sometimes the option is explored and deemed to be impossible.
First, there are the actual guts of the building.
A modern HVAC system or plumbing overhaul can quickly turn into an expensive, head-spinning endeavor worthy of a home renovation show.
Then, there’s the reality that stadiums don’t just host events. They’re designed, ever more optimally, to generate revenue and to do so even when the team isn’t playing.
“How do we set these venues up to be useful, especially in the NFL, more than eight or 10 game days a year,” Talkington said. “It’s a much more detailed decision than, ‘We want a new, fancy, shiny thing.’”
A development vision is in place for the area surrounding Empower Field the Stadium District Master Plan but the Broncos have paused any forward movement on it.
That lack of action doesn’t make it impossible for the Broncos to ultimately stay on site. They could try to buy the land and stadium outright from the MFSD at or near the end of the lease term or reimagine the partnership for the long-term future.
The pull to own the parcel outright and have a major say in what happens around it is common in modern pro sports ownership.
Carrie Walton Penner and Greg Penner of the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group talk on the sidelines during the first quarter against the Dallas Cowboys at Empower Field at Mile High on Saturday, Aug. 13, 2022. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
“Most of the deals that we’ve worked on, incoming owners, their primary question is around venue and the potential upside around the surrounding area,” Draughan said. “… There’s only so much additional revenue you can get from the team. But there’s a layer of influence and there’s also a level of just real estate ownership.”
If not here, then where?
A wide variety of people contacted for this series agreed on two general principles when it comes to picking a spot for a stadium and adjoining development.
First: If done right, this type of project can work in several different demographic environments, from urban cores to fast-growing suburbs to more peripheral parts of a metropolitan area.
Second: If possible, a parcel already in a central location provides the most compelling opportunity.
“SoFi is kind of a unique situation because it is in a city, but there just happened to be a lot of land and the Kroenkes have a lot of money,” Draughan said. “You’re starting to see other folks say, ‘Hey, let’s go out to the suburbs where we can get some public funding and use their space and have people come out to us.’
“Or, and this is more of an interesting one: going to an area that isn’t very developed.”
Those kinds of parcels are typically industrial or formerly industrial areas. They have all the benefits of being in the urban core: transit access, proximity to potential customers, and theoretical desirability for businesses, partners, tenants and developers.
Of course, those same factors make some such parcels — particularly smaller or divvied-up ones — attractive to residential developers.
Andrew Goetz, a University of Denver professor in the department of geography and the environment who specializes in transportation and urban planning and studies, cited River North as an example of an area that once might have fit the bill for a venue-anchored district but has been filled in by other development.
“If there are places that are possible, those should be investigated pretty carefully as well as, I think, the prime choice, which is the existing location,” he said. “…Really give that a thorough examination to see how you could do what you want to do at the current site. And if you can, I think that’s option No. 1.”
Another industrial location is about to go up for sale not far south: Burnham Yard. The 58-acre parcel is bounded by 13th Avenue and 6th Avenue to the north and south and by Osage Street and Seminole Road to the east and west.
Burnham Yard, a 58-acre plot of land located at 800 Seminole Road in Denver on Dec. 4. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
The State of Colorado purchased the plot for $50 million in 2021 with the possibility in mind that Interstate 25 would need to be expanded, rebuilt or rerouted. Instead, the state revealed in a Colorado Transportation Commission meeting in November that it has decided to sell the property by May 2026.
“It should be explored because there is a considerable amount of land that is there,” Goetz said. “It would just require taking a look at the amount of what would need to be done in terms of converting that land area into something that would be functional from a stadium perspective.”
Multiple experts told The Post that Burnham Yard checks all or most of the boxes pro sports teams generally look for, except that it’s slightly small and oddly shaped and thus might require the acquisition of other surrounding land.
These types of sites can be daunting and alluring at the same time.
“When you’re talking about a $2 billion venue, land cost does become a drop in the bucket unless you’re really acquiring a prime site,” Talkington said. “It is one of the reasons why you often see new venues go to areas that have always been somewhat underutilized or in need of reinvestment.”
But also, Draughan said, “If you know that you’re going to revitalize the area, then that can yield an incredible return if you’re able to acquire it.”
A model to emulate?
Though the Braves moved out of downtown Atlanta to Cobb County, The Battery featured several challenges typical of these types of projects.
Major gas lines ran through the site, which had hindered previously considered development.
Often large parcels of land in metro areas sit because the hurdles to development are too big and too expensive for one developer or government entity to tackle on their own.
When the Braves got involved, though, suddenly moving a gas pipeline became a possibility.
When the Warriors decided they wanted to move to San Francisco, an entire section of the waterfront — and the shoreline itself was transformed.
“Those sites have always needed some kind of infrastructure funding, and the venue is the umbrella to be able to make that kind of work at the site make sense,” Talkington said.
Her firm, RCLCo, has studied more than 40 venue-anchored districts around the country and categorized them into eras with distinct hallmarks. A generation ago came a wave of standalone projects — think Patriots Place around New England’s stadium. Then city-led developments took over.
“Capitol Riverfront around the Nationals’ ballpark (in Washington) is a really good example. We even called out the early development in LoDo around Coors Field,” Talkington said.
Then sports ownership groups started to want to be more directly involved in the development and ownership of projects because of the revenue potential and political cache that comes with the territory.
It’s led to the most recent trend in public financing for private stadiums: using development district sales and occupancy taxes to serve as a funding mechanism to repay bonds and provide long-term maintenance for venues.
The Battery features hotels, a 4,000-seat concert venue, office space, restaurants, a Top Golf and more.
Fans gather inside The Battery Atlanta to watch Game 2 of the National League Wild Card Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Atlanta Braves on Oct. 1, 2020, in Cobb County, Ga. (Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
“You can go there on non-baseball days and have a great time,” Draughan said. “Or you can go there on baseball days and not even watch a game and still have a great time. In order for the Atlanta Braves to pull that off, they had to create a destination. If they just had the ballpark out there and really nothing else around it, it would have been more difficult.”
Cobb County said in its annual fiscal report that an estimated 10.3 million people visited The Battery in 2023 and that the district hosted 367 events — 86 of which were Braves home baseball games.
What that translates to: juiced returns for ownership. The Braves reported in August that overall revenue was up 5% in the second quarter of 2024 over the previous year, and revenue related to The Battery was up 11% year-over-year to $16.9 million for the quarter.
“You need to have a destination,” Draughan said. “It has to be, ‘Hey, we’re taking the family and we’re going out to whatever and having a good time there.’ As opposed to, ‘OK, I’m going to the game.’ So you have to have that kind of destination type of feeling to the establishment.”
Decision time coming
The Broncos have been diligent in considering their options.
Their standard answer to stadium questions hasn’t wavered much in the past two-plus years.
“I’ve been getting the stadium questions since day one about two years ago,” Broncos president Damani Leech said in late August when the club broke ground on a new $175 million training facility and team headquarters. “I think the answer is the same one: It’s a pretty long process. We’re still evaluating everything. Everything’s on the table. We’ll continue to explore it and make a decision at a time that makes sense for us.”
Denver Broncos president Damani Leech stands on the field before the first quarter against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver on Sept. 15. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
That time is coming.
The Bills and Titans’ stadium projects each are set to take about four years from the time they were first publicly announced — essentially when the sites and finances had been finalized — to when they are set to open. Those are deals that so far have had only the garden-variety issues like weather and budget overruns.
The Chicago Bears purchased a massive tract of land in the suburbs in early 2023 and have since gone through multiple variations of plans in different places and now are hoping, though not guaranteed, to start work on a lakefront stadium next year.
The bottom line: The decision-making process is a long one, and so is the completion of the actual project. The Broncos do hold a pair of five-year options at Empower Field beyond 2030, so they’ve got flexibility if they need it.
In the meantime, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment has announced a major development plan around Ball Arena. Whether the Broncos remain neighbors on the other side of I-25 or move elsewhere in the coming years, there is sure to be major action in the future.
And real estate will likely play a big role.
“If you’re a team owner and a land owner, you’re that much more politically influential in what things get done in your municipality and how you’re viewed by residents there,” Draughan said.
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