We are thrilled by rumors that the Broncos’ new owners are acquiring land to keep the football team in the heart of Denver, right where it belongs.
A brand new, privately financed stadium on currently contaminated and abandoned land, Burnham Yard, is a vision we can get behind. The 58-acre rail yard is now owned by the Colorado Department of Transportation.
The Denver Post reported last week – following some brilliant reporting from BusinessDen – that part of the deal the Walton-Penner group is looking to make in addition to acquiring the state’s land would include buying a portion of Denver Water’s 36-acre campus where the headquarters and operations center are located.
We’re not opposed to the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group buying some land from Denver Water to help the group spend billions building a stadium and a privately owned entertainment district. But it only seems logical that Denver Water would need to be compensated for the trouble of moving from this historic 150-year-old campus that recently underwent an entire rebuild to become a world-class facility.
“We recognize the impact this development could have to the largest community we serve,” Denver Water CEO and manager Alan Salazar said in an interview requested following The Post’s report. “Creative minds can think about ways that this could work. We’re trying to get there.”
Salazar said some things are not negotiable: The deal cannot devalue Denver Water and must protect the financial security of the enterprise. The deal can’t cause any upward pressure on water rates, and Salazar simply pointed out that the charter of the voter-created utility prevents money from being spent on anything that isn’t a waterworks project.
We say that Denver Water can in no way be asked to help subsidize this private development. Any private company would hold out for a substantial payout before ripping up its roots to relocate, and a good CEO would always be ready to walk away from negotiations if it wasn’t in their best interests.
That doesn’t mean the deal is dead, but it certainly complicates negotiations.
It’s unclear whether the Broncos need the land or whether they could build the stadium on the old rail yard and make a smaller entertainment district and still make the kind of return on investment they are aiming for.
Today, the Denver Water campus includes a brand-new headquarters on the far north side of the campus where white-collar employees, including engineers, human resources, and communications employees, work. We can’t imagine the Broncos would want that building.
But most of the land — and likely the land we imagine could be sold — is occupied by a number of high-tech service buildings, warehouses, and parking lots designed with efficiency and productivity in mind. Those buildings are only a few years old, and touring the campus makes it clear that Denver Water spared no expense to make this property its home forever. A brick pathway through the campus is marked with the names of every retiree from the company, with their dates of service.
This is the campus where hundreds of Denver Water employees start their day before dispersing out to a service area that stretches from Denver International Airport to Ken Caryl. Workers help supply clean drinking water from mountain reservoirs to some of the state’s largest municipalities, and the machine shop services everything from snowmobiles to dump trucks.
Moving those operations is not something that should be taken lightly.
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Denver Water Administration building, left, and Empower Field at Mile High, right, in Denver on Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
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Denver Water Administration building, left, and Empower Field at Mile High, right, in Denver on Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
As we’ve said before, we are not opposed to the Walton-Penner group getting some level of subsidy from the state of Colorado and the city of Denver, but that deal must be entirely transparent and account for every dollar given to these heirs of the Walmart fortune, Rob Walton and his son-in-law Greg Penner.
Before any deal is inked behind closed doors, the public needs to be told the modern-day market value of Burnham Yard and the value of Denver Water’s property with a true appraisal conducted by an independent firm.
And while it makes sense for the city of Denver and the state to incentivize the business prospects of the football stadium, we cannot see any possible justification for Denver Water to share in that burden.
Denver Water, much like the Broncos, is a storied institution.
We now know, thanks to Penner’s decision not to renew the lease at the existing Mile High Stadium (Empower Field), that the half-life of a new stadium is only about 4.5 years. In sharp contrast, Denver Water will be providing life-sustaining water to much of metro Denver for almost a million people into the foreseeable future, perhaps for as long as there are people on the Front Range.
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