Dave Keefe, the owner of The Original Brooklyn’s just south of Empower Field, has witnessed the evolution of the neighborhoods around the Broncos’ stadiums over the 41 years he’s operated his restaurant at the corner of Old West Colfax Avenue and Morrison Road.
Like many, he’s unsure what the area’s future holds, now that the Broncos are exploring building a new stadium elsewhere.
But there is one thing he’s positive of should Empower Field cease to be the Broncos’ home: Sun Valley will be OK.
“If they leave, this is going to be the biggest empty hunk of land in the central part of Denver that’s undeveloped,” Keefe said as he pointed toward the stadium and its lots packed with tailgaters. “You can just imagine what’s going to happen to that, especially considering the development that’s already exploding in Sun Valley and surrounding areas.”
Sun Valley, the neighborhood in which Empower Field sits, has been the Broncos’ home since 1960.
But amid increasing odds that the team pulls up stakes in favor of a new stadium elsewhere, what will be the effect on Sun Valley — as well as the West Colfax neighborhood just to the west of Empower Field, Sloan’s Lake to the northwest and Jefferson Park to the north?
If that move happens, neighborhood stakeholders’ goal is to more seamlessly connect Sun Valley with the changes across the highway in River Mile (the planned redevelopment of Elitch Gardens) and the 55-acre Ball Arena redevelopment. It would be a challenging task, given that the Empower Field property consists of 95 acres of asphalt and a 76,125-seat stadium wedged between the busiest stretch of I-25 and two of Denver’s most active thoroughfares, Colfax Avenue and Federal Boulevard.
“You could walk from heart of the Ball Arena redevelopment to whatever happens on the Empower Field site in 15 minutes,” Keefe said. “Now all of a sudden you have a new central city section, even if there’s no football stadium.”
Jeanne Granville, president of the Sun Valley Community Coalition and a key figure behind the Westside Stadium Community Coalition, vows Sun Valley and the surrounding neighborhoods will “adapt and make the best of whatever occurs.”
The team’s lease with the Metropolitan Football Stadium District for the use of Empower Field goes through 2030, though the team could trigger one or two five-year extensions to remain there through 2035 or ’40.
The Walton-Penner ownership group has already put on hold the Stadium District Master Plan, which would have transformed parking lots around Empower Field into a mixed-use neighborhood and entertainment district to provide funding for stadium improvements. Owner Greg Penner also acknowledged in August that the team is evaluating options for a new stadium at a different site.
So the Broncos could very well leave their current home — the same site where they first played at Bears Stadium, which evolved into Mile High Stadium and was later replaced by Empower Field (under a different name) in 2001.
“Whether the stadium stays or leaves, we’re interested in making sure that those values that we had identified in the Stadium District Master Plan are implemented,” Granville said.
“… There would certainly be opportunities for open space, and housing, and hopefully affordable housing and small businesses. Those are the values we had in the Stadium District Master Plan and those goals haven’t changed.”
Sun Valley — one of the lowest-income neighborhoods in Denver, with about 80% of residents living in poverty, according to the neighborhood’s development website — has already seen significant redevelopment over the past five years.
In 2016, the neighborhood was awarded a $30 million Choice Neighborhood Initiative Implementation Grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to implement the Sun Valley Neighborhood Transformation Plan. That development is in its latter stages, with more than 300 obsolete public housing units replaced, and approximately 960 mixed-income units built.
Like many Denver neighborhoods, West Colfax, Sloan’s Lake and Jefferson Park have also seen significant change, with older single-story houses razed and replaced with multilevel modern homes. Other development, such as the STEAM on the Platte project that is building a mixed-used development near The Original Brooklyn’s, is underway.
A reverter clause in the contract between the Broncos and the stadium district calls for the Empower Field land, which includes its sea of parking lots, to be given back to the city of Denver should the area no longer be used for NFL games. But if the Broncos leave, major questions must be addressed before the 95-acre parcel can be reimagined.
“Who tears down the stadium? Who does the environmental remediation of that property? There are things under that asphalt that we’re not prepared to dig into yet, is my guess, without understanding exactly what’s under there,” said Denver Councilwoman Jamie Torres, whose district includes Sun Valley and West Colfax.
“… That said, that is more than likely what the city would do with that property if it were to come back to the city: turn it back into a reconnected neighborhood.”
Cristian Flores, a 28-year-old West Colfax resident, acknowledges that losing the stadium would “be a huge change to the vibe of the surrounding neighborhoods” — some of it good, some of it not.
“I’m a city boy and I like being next to the stadium, walking my dog over there, waking up and seeing it every day as a sort of neighborhood pillar,” Flores said. “But if a stadium wasn’t there, it would be nice to have a close shopping center, kind of like a 16th Street Mall with shops, restaurants, entertainment. And a closer grocery store would be nice, because that is an issue for this area of the city.”
University of Denver professor of transportation, urban/regional planning and policy Andrew Goetz believes the Ball Arena project could fill the void Flores discussed and accentuate whatever redevelopment would occur on the Empower Field site.
“There’s a real opportunity there to benefit the neighborhoods and the community, so I don’t think it would be so devastating if the Broncos move,” Goetz said.
Carrie Makarewicz, an associate professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Colorado Denver who has studied the transformation of Sun Valley, said the neighborhood is “like a missing tooth in the redevelopment of all these areas” when considering the Ball Arena project, the new River Mile community and other recent advancements.
The Broncos moving could turn a stadium that she sees as “a very isolated structure” into a more accessible area that’s a year-round asset for the neighborhood. Sun Valley’s disconnected street grid has it boxed in by Federal Boulevard to the west, Sixth Avenue to the south, the South Platte River to the east and the elevated Colfax Avenue viaduct intersecting its northern sector.
“(Redevelopment there) could really help downtown because it would be a more seamless connection from the west neighborhoods into downtown, without having to go around the stadium,” Makarewicz said. “… It would be nice to reattach the seams of it all so it wouldn’t be such an example of 1950s, wall-off-the-community type of urban renewal.”
Area businesses will miss the economic boom of gameday, though, like in the case of The Original Brooklyn’s, Keefe said revenue lost from Broncos home games and events at Empower Field will likely be made up via money coming in from new apartments and condos. In the blocks around Keefe’s bar alone, there are about 500 units opening up in the next year.
From a resident’s perspective, a new vision for the Empower Field property would be just fine for Jim Sweigart, an 82-year-old who’s lived a few blocks west of the stadium for 42 years. He believes locals will adapt, for the better, to whatever comes next.
“Life would go on,” Sweigart said. “And there’d definitely be a lot less traffic.”
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