La Alma Lincoln Park wants a voice in the Broncos stadium development. Its first hurdle is funding.
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DENVER — For the first time, the monthly La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood association meeting was standing-room only. More than 100 people registered for the meeting Oct. 22 within 24 hours, many of them first-time attendees.
The big ticket item on the agenda: the new Denver Broncos football stadium.
In September, the Denver Broncos announced its desire to build a new stadium at Burnham Yard, a 58-acre former railyard in La Alma Lincoln Park, about a mile away from the team’s current stadium on the other side of I-25.
The development — which will include restaurants, retail spaces, housing and hotels — will be entirely funded by the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group, which owns the Broncos. The team promised that city and state improvements around the area won’t raise taxes.
Mayor Mike Johnston supports the plan, calling it a “win-win-win” situation, but the residents of La Alma Lincoln Park have questions and concerns about the proposed development.
In an effort to make their voices heard, residents are planning a community benefits agreement. A CBA is a legal contract between a developer and representatives from the community.
In exchange for supporting the developer’s project, the neighborhood coalition negotiates with them to find ways the development can positively impact the community.
The residents’ biggest hurdle to executing the CBA is funding.
“That's the thing that keeps me up at night currently,” said 16-year-resident Christiano Sosa, secretary of the La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood association.
Sosa said the neighborhood association needs to raise about $200,000 to support the formation of the CBA. He has raised $51,250 so far from residents and grant programs with the Denver Foundation and the city’s Department of Economic Development. Sosa started fundraising as soon as the Broncos announced the plan for the new stadium.
La Alma Lincoln Park is one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in Denver. The area has a large Hispanic population and a rich cultural history.
It’s home to the Santa Fe Arts District and was the heart of Denver’s Chicano movement in the late 1960s and 70s. In 2021, Denver City Council voted to designate the neighborhood as a historic cultural district.
Demographics in the neighborhood are changing. From 2018 to 2023, the median household income doubled and the minority population in the neighborhood decreased.
Residents like Judah Trabulsi are concerned about how a professional football stadium in their backyard will exacerbate the gentrification happening in the neighborhood.
“Some people are excited that their [home’s] value will go up, other people think they’ll get kicked out,” Trabulsi said.
Residents’ participation in CBAs is usually volunteer-based, but the group still needs to pay attorneys and consultants to guide them through the process and help them negotiate the best deal for the community.
“If you live in a rich neighborhood, you probably got lawyers and architects and even former city planners living there. But where these large scale developments occur is usually in more marginalized communities that really don't have the resources within it,” said Jeanne Granville, president of the Sun Valley Community Coalition.
“It doesn't mean that they don't have a lot of smart people, but it's a big learning curve. Land use is complex.”
Granville has been involved with several CBAs in Denver, including for the Ball Arena development plan and the future professional women’s soccer stadium. Her nonprofit, Fresh Start, serves as a fiscal sponsor for resident-led initiatives, like CBAs, so they can apply for grant funding.
The La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood association is the convener for the Broncos stadium CBA. That means its board members are leading the organization of the agreement — securing funding, hosting informational meetings, communicating with residents — but they are not the de facto negotiators for the final contract.
“We want to build a strong coalition, with diverse interests, viewpoints, residents, businesses, non-profits, so that we can speak with one voice in negotiations,” Sosa said.
This coalition will be made up of several issue-specific committees. For example, one committee might focus on affordable housing concerns.
Residents, business owners and other community stakeholders who want to participate in the formation of the CBA, and who have the time to do so, can join a committee. Only two or three people will represent the coalition’s interests at the negotiation table.
To make participation in the agreement more equitable, the group needs money to pay for childcare, food and Spanish translation services at meetings. Sosa said he would also like to pay residents a stipend for their participation since many of his neighbors work more than one job.
In the last six months of organizing the CBA for the Ball Arena development in 2024, Granville said community members, all of whom were volunteers, spent about 15 hours a week working on the project.
“Right now there isn't a real clear funding path for the kind of help that the community needs,” Granville said.
Organizations like the Denver Foundation, the Rose Community Foundation and the Gates Family Foundation have provided grant funds to CBAs in Denver in the past.
Foundation or city grants are not the most reliable funding source for CBAs because the residents’ timeline doesn’t always match up with when the organization is accepting proposals and disbursing funds, Granville said.
The Broncos plan to open the new stadium for the 2031 season, after its current lease at Mile High Stadium expires in 2030. The timeline isn’t yet clear for when the community coalition needs to sign the CBA.
Even though Governor Jared Polis and Mayor Johnston are fans of the project, the Broncos still need City Council approval on several factors related to the development, including rezoning the land, finalizing a development agreement and creating a metropolitan district for the site.
City planners with Denver Community Planning and Development are putting together a small area plan for Burnham Yard, which will use community input to establish guidelines for redeveloping the land.
The small area plan isn’t expected to be completed until the end of 2026, and it’s unlikely any zoning changes will be approved before the plan is finalized.
Sosa doesn’t want his community to feel rushed while putting together the CBA, but he’d like to secure the necessary funding as quickly as possible. In his ideal world, he would have hired the necessary attorneys and experts yesterday.
“What would be most helpful to us is to have that secured so that we can focus on the things that matter most. And that's the community organizing, the coalition building, the committee work, the reports and working with the city on their processes versus splitting time between fundraising,” Sosa said.
At a neighborhood association meeting after the Broncos’ announcement, residents voiced concerns about the disruption of construction, increased traffic on residential streets and environmental concerns about developing an old railyard.
The neighborhood association is still in the process of organizing and funding the CBA efforts, so nothing has been decided about what the community will ask for during its negotiations with the Broncos.
At this point, residents are encouraged to consider what benefits or changes they’d like to see in the neighborhood. Trabulsi said he’d like to see guaranteed jobs for locals at the stadium and youth sports programs funded by the team.
The contract signed between Kroenke Sports and a coalition of neighborhood groups regarding the Ball Arena development plan is the most recent example of what could be included in a CBA.
According to this agreement, the development will include an early learning center, 5,000 square feet of community art space and a certain percentage of affordable housing units and women-or-minority-owned businesses on the site.
It also set aside 20% of the site’s permanent jobs for low-income residents and included a $2 million investment in internship opportunities, with half of those dedicated to Indigenous youth or people whose families were displaced by the Auraria campus.
These are just a few of the stipulations agreed upon in the Ball Arena contract. Each CBA is unique to the coalition of community groups who negotiate it.
“Community benefits are still relatively new. Whatever we can learn from one that can be applied to the next one, we’re willing to share,” Granville said.
One of her key takeaways from working on CBAs: “The community needs to show up and keep up with community benefits agreements,” she said.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.