The Denver Broncos may have finished their search for a new stadium site, but it’s just the beginning of a long process to make the team’s new home at Burnham Yard a reality.
There will be community negotiations. There will be an environmental cleanup. There will be planning and design. And there will be a whole lot of bureaucracy.
The city and the team will try to balance the importance of each of those steps with the looming deadline of the expiration of the Broncos’ lease at Empower Field at Mile High at the end of the 2030 season. The team hopes to have its stadium — and a neighboring mixed-use development — underway or completed by then.
The Broncos, along with Gov. Jared Polis and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, announced Tuesday that Burnham Yard is the preferred location for a new stadium.
The team plans to purchase the 58-acre former railyard from the state and 25 acres from Denver Water. In the past year, the Broncos privately acquired other parcels surrounding the former railyard, which is east of Interstate 25 and north of U.S. 6, just south of downtown. The yard stretches from 13th Avenue to the north to south of the Sixth Avenue bridge.
The Broncos expect to spend an estimated $4 billion to build a state-of-the-art stadium as well as housing and an entertainment district that would draw events and people year-round.
But first, the team must navigate the following process:
Develop a community benefit agreement
Many of the decision points around the new stadium will hinge on a not-yet-developed community benefit agreement, or CBA. It’s a type of contract negotiated between developers of a project and the surrounding neighborhoods that is increasingly common in stadium deals.
Under CBAs, developers can be compelled to meet certain requirements intended to help the surrounding area, such as building affordable housing units, leasing commercial space to local businesses and selecting local artists for any commissions.
A CBA for the planned redevelopment of the area around Ball Arena required developers to construct an early learning center, fund youth programming and build pedestrian and bike connections nearby.
The Broncos have agreed to engage with leaders in the La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood to develop such an agreement.
Stay in the Loop sign on the sidewalk at La Alma Lincoln Park in Denver on Thursday, June 26, 2025. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Stay in the Loop sign on the sidewalk at La Alma Lincoln Park in Denver on Thursday, June 26, 2025. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Denver City Councilwoman Jamie Torres, who represents the area, said she sent several CBAs from stadium deals, including the agreement for Ball Arena redevelopment, to community leaders to prepare them for negotiations.
CBA agreements can take months or years to complete, but Torres said she won’t rush it along.
The City Council weighs in
Typically, the City Council waits to take any of the formal votes necessary for a project until after the community is satisfied with the terms of the CBA.
Once that contract is negotiated, the council will likely first vote on the Burnham Yard Small Area Plan, which officials are expected to begin developing in October and finish late next year.
The small area plan, which will be designed to be compatible with the CBA, is a guiding document that makes land-use recommendations for the stadium and the surrounding area, deciding what types of uses and density can go there.
The council is expected to vote on rezoning the land, which is currently designated as an industrial zone, soon after that, said Alex Foster, a spokesperson for Denver Planning and Development. The new zoning will be decided during the land-planning process, Foster said. Council members will also consider a development agreement, which is the plan for the actual stadium site, as part of the rezoning process.
The council may consider creating a new metropolitan district to pay for infrastructure and maintenance if the developers request one.
West 8th Ave. viaduct over Burnham Yard in Denver, on Thursday, July 31, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
West 8th Ave. viaduct over Burnham Yard in Denver, on Thursday, July 31, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
The 13 elected members will also have a part to play in whether the new stadium is eligible for tax-increment financing, which is essentially a tax break. Tax-increment financing is a tool that cities sometimes use to incentivize development in areas that might otherwise be too expensive to build on.
To get the tax break, the land must be considered “blighted,” which generally means it has some combination of factors making it difficult to develop, such as polluted land, deteriorated structures, inadequate infrastructure and unsafe conditions. The tax dollars can be used to remedy the expenses required to prepare the site.
Tracy Huggins, who runs the Denver agency that develops those tax-break plans, said she believes the site is a strong candidate for the financing tool.
“Many of those conditions are likely present on the site,” she said. “Going in, there’s at least a reasonable expectation that there may be some financing challenges.”
Huggins’ agency, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority, will start by conducting a formal study of the property to decide if it’s blighted. Then they must research the project itself to find out whether it could be built without any public subsidy. If the authority determines that the cost to prepare the site and land is too expensive to justify the project, then it is eligible for the tax break.
The tax break is generated by freezing the amount of property or sales taxes the project owes the city for up to 25 years. The city then returns any taxes collected over that amount to the developer to recoup the costs of the allowed expenses.
Need for environmental remediation
Contamination from Burnham Yard’s former life as a railroad depot is spread across the property.
Before the Colorado Department of Transportation bought the railyard in 2021, it hired Terracon, an environmental consulting firm in Denver, to perform a site analysis to identify potential environmental hazards.
That study found multiple toxic chemicals in the soil and groundwater along with three underground plumes, likely caused by diesel fuel and oil storage.
Terracon’s engineers also reported that a utility pole had been cut down, damaging multiple transformers that spilled oil on the ground. The site was littered with scrap metal, asphalt debris, discarded railroad ties, coal and cinder.
The engineers also found trash, drug paraphernalia and human excrement due to encampments on the property, according to a copy of Terracon’s Limited Site Investigation Report obtained by The Denver Post through a Colorado Open Records Act request.
Contaminants found in the soil include total petroleum hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, lead, arsenic and chromium, the Terracon report stated.
Groundwater contaminants included additional total petroleum hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, lead, cadmium and polychlorinated biphenyls, which were banned in the 1970s because they are so harmful to human health.
Burnham Yard also is near an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site for radium contamination, but the Terracon report did not find any indication that there is a substantial amount of radioactive material underground.
Several structures have been demolished recently at Burnham Yard in Denver, as seen on July 28, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Several structures have been demolished recently at Burnham Yard in Denver, as seen on July 28, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
The closest contamination to Burnham Yard is underground at Atlas Metals & Iron, a scrapyard on the west side of the property, across from a set of railroad tracks. But as long as Atlas maintains the parking lot, it is considered by the EPA to be a cap that contains the contamination.
CDOT still owns the property and any cleanup is under the state agency’s supervision. Details on a potential sale have not been disclosed although the team and state have said they have a “conceptual agreement” for a purchase.
In April, a contractor working for CDOT received approval from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division to remove asbestos from Burnham Yard. That material is likely inside old train yard buildings that started being torn down in late July.
For now, those are the only permits for environmental cleanup work on record for the railyard.
If the Broncos buy the former railyard, the team would have to apply for any needed environmental permits. It is unclear whether the organization could start work as those permit applications are pending; the state health department did not respond to The Denver Post’s questions about permitting at the site.
Sports teams often choose blighted property to build stadiums, including in Denver, where Coors Field was also built on a former railyard. Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City was built on a former Superfund site where the U.S. Army manufactured chemical weapons.
But the Broncos will need permits for hazardous waste removal and likely for stormwater runoff at the construction site.
John Spear, a professor of environmental engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, said the length of time needed for environmental cleanup will depend on what is found once scientists and engineers conduct a detailed study of the property. There could be unknowns underground because the site was used as a train yard, starting in 1871, when there were no environmental laws and no official records of what was being done on the property.
“There’s a lot going on on that site that needs to be cleaned up. It’s a challenge to think about the best way to do it, and incorporate the solution to cleaning it up with the construction of the place,” Spear said. “It will be fun to see how this goes along.”
It’s likely soil contaminants will be removed as contractors work on the Broncos’ massive stadium.
“They’re going to be digging deep to build their foundations, and if they’re going to do that, they can do both things at one time,” he said.
The cleanup also will be expensive, “but ultimately that’s money well-spent because of liability downstream,” Spear said.
Still, Spear said the Broncos organization has the capacity to make the cleanup happen and likely get it done to meet the goal of opening a stadium in time for the kickoff of the 2031 season.
“It’s a big chunk of land in a major American city with a sports team that is popular. So where there is a will, there will be a way to clean up as fast as possible so people can use it as fast as possible,” Spear said.
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