It’s been almost a year since Denver Broncos owners Greg and Carrie Penner, Mayor Mike Johnston, and Gov. Jared Polis announced plans for a new stadium to be built by 2031 at Denver’s state-owned Burnham Yard railyards, with the big remaining questions being how much the Penners would pay for the land, how they would get it rezoned for sports use, how much public money they would get for “infrastructure” like new roads, whether they would get tax increment financing to kick back sales and/or property taxes to help pay for construction, who would clean up contaminated soil at the site, and what kind of community benefits agreement to agree to. They’re still figuring most of that out, and last weekend Broncos president Damani Leech went to the hustings to tell reporters that team officials are growing annoyed that things aren’t moving faster:
“I’ve got to be honest, I wish we were further along in some areas than we are now. I think areas where we do control, particularly real estate, you mentioned Burnham Yard, real estate, engaging with the community, we’ve done site tours of the location, the design of the stadium continues to evolve, the master plan continues to evolve. All of those things are moving along really, really well, but we also understand that we can’t do this alone.
“There are certain things we don’t control. I think as an example, the community benefits process is something that we can’t control. We’ve had a lot of initial great discussions with community representatives. More recently here, it’s been on more of a staff level. We’re eager to engage with those community members directly, understand what they’re looking for, what needs and interests they have on the development. Things like that, we have to continue to progress. We said many months ago, this is an ambitious timeline, so for that to happen, we need everybody to be involved. We can’t do it alone in order to get to 2031.”
Leech said opening the stadium by 2031 is “still achievable for sure,” but that “everybody has to be involved.”
Is there frustration with the process?
“I’ll be honest, there are days when I have concern,” Leech said, “there are days when I have frustration because you can’t control it all, so I think that’s fair.”
This all starts off reasonably enough — shit takes time, damn that bureaucracy — and it’s unclear from NBC Sports’ Mike Florio’s recounting whether it was reporters or Leech who introduced the word “frustration.” (Denver Sports’ longer quote makes it seem more like the latter.) Still, taken as a whole, this becomes a clear message to city and state officials and community negotiators: Why doesn’t anyone else share our urgency about giving us what we want so we can open our stadium by our chosen date? It’s like you all have other priorities or something!
The Penners did win an agreement in May with the state Department of Transportation for a right of first refusal to buy the rail yards for $45.8 million, $23.6 million less than the state paid for the land and a track easement between 2021 and 2025. (Under the deal, the team will pay for cleanup costs.) But the sale isn’t finalized yet, nor are the rezoning or the TIFs or the infrastructure money, so the total public cost is still very much up in the air.
Meanwhile, Leech also called requiring fans to buy personal seat licenses in order to buy tickets to be “a pretty likely thing to happen,” which is both unsurprising — most other NFL teams do it, as a way to monetize their season ticket holder waitlist while hoping nobody notices that fans often end up holding ticket rights that nobody wants to buy — and likely to be unpopular given how fans of teams like the Buffalo Bills are growing concerned that they’re being priced out of affording tickets. This is absolutely something that city and state officials could be making part of their negotiations, but negotiating is so tiresome, can’t we get to the fun part already where we get to build our stadium? Go write that down, reporters, we’re trying to build a narrative here!
He needs to include more of a non-threat threat to move the team.
With both Boulder and Greensboro sitting empty, the threat should be obvious.
Walmart doesn’t pay their employees a decent living wage. Most of them are on state subsidies such as food and healthcare.
They can pay for their own damn stadium and everything else that goes along with it.
Please stop buying into Billionaires demands! Go Seahawks!
I’d like to see the stats behind that word “most.” But then, many low-income people are on some form of public subsidy. Good for Walmart for hiring low-skill people who aren’t able to find highly-paid employment. Or would you rather they give up their Walmart jobs and simply use welfare as their full-time gig?
You seem to be under the misapprehension that low-income working people are low-income because of something inherent to them, not because their employers don’t pay them very much.
You’re probably right that “most” Walmart workers aren’t paid so little that they’re eligible for public benefits, but over 30% are (see report below), which is a pretty large number. Either way, Walmart is ducking providing its workers with a living wage or health insurance, and relying on taxpayers to keep its employees alive.
https://ips-dc.org/report-americas-20-largest-low-wage-employers-and-the-affordability-crisis/
It’s even worse than many of their entry level employees just ‘being’ on food stamps.
Walmart actually has them apply for this and other forms of social assistance as part of the hiring on process – because they know they aren’t paying anything like a living wage.
This is not what income support programs are supposed to be used for… enriching the already staggeringly wealthy.
Pay your people, scumbags. If it means chocolate almonds, bread and milk go up a few cents (notice what order I put those in…) then so be it. Of course, the Walton families COULD just take a smaller cut of the profits and leave the food stuffs at their present price.
But does anyone really expect them to think of that?
For someone whose job is to extract as much money as possible from the public, the name “Leech” is so perfect that if this was a fictional story, like a novel or a screenplay, the author’s editor would suggest changing the name to something more subtle.