A series of limited liability corporations have purchased at least 13 parcels of land around a potential future Broncos stadium site in Denver since last summer and paid more than $150 million combined to do so.
The transactions, first reported by BusinessDen and later confirmed by The Denver Post, started in August 2024 and have continued through this spring. The plots surround the Burham Yard railyard, a state-owned, 58-acre property in Lincoln Park that is for sale and has many of the hallmarks of a potential stadium site.
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At least nine of the LLCs that purchased the properties were created in 2023, and none of the sales were connected to a loan, a review of public documents revealed.
Citing an unnamed source familiar with the real estate deals, BusinessDen reported that at least 10 of the LLCs have ties to the Broncos’ Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group. The Post has not independently verified that connection.
The Broncos declined to comment on specific real estate transactions around Burnham Yard or elsewhere.
“As we’ve previously shared, we are involved in a comprehensive process regarding the future of our stadium,” a Broncos spokesman told The Post. “No determinations have been made as we continue to evaluate several options in and around the Denver metro area.”
Real estate records reveal that these LLCs are not just random corporations with no connective tissue.
The Post found that in at least nine of the transactions — including six plots that sold for a combined $22 million all within two blocks directly north of Burnham Yard — the sale was handled on the buyer’s side by Lea Ann Fowler, a real estate attorney at Hogan Lovells. Fowler previously worked with Broncos general counsel Tim Aragon at the same firm, where he was the managing partner of its Denver office before leaving in 2022 to work for the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group.
Each of those six purchases was made between August 2024 and January using a variety of LLCs, including Villard LLC, Compass Peak Holdings LLC, Summitt 55 Company LLC and 1396 Canyon Lane LLC.
Just south of the rail yard, Tim Armitage sold his property at 657 North Osage St. in October.
The price — $2.7 million — felt like an above-market deal for the 9,361 square-foot warehouse he owned for five years.
As for the buyer? He has no idea.
“Never met them; never knew a thing about it,” Armitage told The Post on Wednesday. “I didn’t care; it didn’t matter to me. They had the money and I was selling it.”
Another property owner reached by The Denver Post said they couldn’t comment because language included in the contract prohibits talking about the sale.
All of these smaller parcels are set around the 58-acre Burnham Yard, which the Colorado Department of Transportation owns and is currently in the process of selling. It says it intends to do so by next spring.
“The (CTIO) is still conducting due diligence on the most beneficial uses and site preparation to eventually sell the property,” CDOT communications director and special adviser to the executive director Matt Inzeo told The Post on Wednesday.
Burnham Yard is considered a possible site for a new Broncos stadium should they ultimately decide to move from Empower Field at Mile High.
“In terms of the vein of keeping it in urban Denver or close to downtown … I would put a bet that’s where it happens,” Chris Phenecie, a senior vice president at the commercial real estate firm CBRE, told The Post recently.
Several consultants agreed last year that Burnham Yard fits the bill for the type of parcel that works for a professional sports stadium, with one exception.
The yard itself is too small.
For a stadium and an adjacent entertainment district of some kind, anybody wanting to build a stadium there would need to acquire additional land surrounding it.
That can be an expensive proposition, but even working through purchasing multiple plots from various buyers over a long period of time can be worthwhile.
“When you’re talking about a $2 billion venue, land cost does become a drop in the bucket unless you’re really acquiring a prime site,” Erin Talkington, the managing director of RCLCO, a real estate advisory firm whose work includes consulting for sports ownership groups and municipalities on major development projects, told The Post in 2024. “It is one of the reasons why you often see new venues go to areas that have always been somewhat underutilized or in need of reinvestment.”
Recent sales made near Burnham Yard late last year and early this year were averaging close to $300 per square foot of built space. By contrast, the list prices per square foot for four industrial properties in other parts of central Denver that are being marketed averaged closer to $155 a square foot, or about half. That comparison doesn’t account for differences in the amount of land involved in each deal.
Two of the biggest parcels are Denver Water’s 36-acre campus to the west and SRM Concrete, which is wedged between Denver Water and the yard on the north end. Denver Water and Burnham Yard extend south to and beyond the 8th Avenue bridge.
While those plots have not sold recently, several others in the area have. The total purchase price for 13 recent sales around Burnham, according to public records reviewed by The Post and BusinessDen reporting: Nearly $153 million.
Acquiring land like this can serve multiple purposes for a professional sports franchise. It can set a club up to build and develop or it can be used to serve as leverage while negotiating with a municipality.
Once a site is finalized, ownership groups are interested in using a stadium as an anchor to any number of kinds of entertainment districts. Such projects are in various states of progress up and down the Interstate 25 corridor from Burnham Yard, with Kroenke Sports and Entertainment set to develop around Ball Arena and the new NWSL franchise coming to Denver setting out to develop Santa Fe Yards to the south.
“Most of the deals that we’ve worked on, incoming owners, their primary question is around venue and the potential upside around the surrounding area,” Edwin Draughan, a director and partner at Park Lane, a sports-focused investment bank, told The Post in 2024. “… There’s only so much additional revenue you can get from the team. But there’s a layer of influence and there’s also a level of just real estate ownership.”
The Broncos’ current lease with the Metropolitan Football Stadium District runs through the 2030 season, though the club has the ability to extend it for five years if needed. Still, the 2030 date does put the team in a position where it has some time and flexibility.
Stadium projects around the NFL tend to take about four years between the time they’re first announced and when the stadium is built and ready for use. That same timeline would put the Broncos within about a year of needing to have a project site approved and announced if they do indeed decide to build new.
Team president Damani Leech said earlier this spring that the club had “a healthy amount of pressure” to move forward in their decision-making process.
“We are not holding ourselves to that to say we absolutely have to have something by that year,” he said. “The components of what happens, though, are real and important. Stadiums typically take about 48 months to build from a construction standpoint. You think about what has to happen from a permitting standpoint and all those things. We’re starting to build out those calendars to get a better understanding of, once you do decide what to do, how long it’s going to take.”
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