Ball Arena’s owner is looking to finalize plans for a nearly 4-acre site adjacent to the arena. (BusinessDen file)
The specifics are in for the first expected phase of development of Ball Arena’s parking lots.
In documents being submitted to Denver on Monday, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment details four buildings it thinks should kick off a development effort that will eventually extend across the stadium’s 56 acres of surface lots.
The plans call for two 12-story apartment buildings, a 13-story hotel and a roughly 5,000-seat concert venue.
The structures would tie into a bicycle and pedestrian bridge across Speer Boulevard that would better connect the arena to LoDo.
“The challenge for us is to create a … sports-anchored mixed-use neighborhood that is a place where someone would feel comfortable living 24/7, that it’s got neighborhood services and neighborhood offerings that you would find in any great neighborhood in Denver,” said Matt Mahoney, KSE’s senior vice president of development.
KSE and billionaire Stan Kroenke own the 20,000-seat arena, as well as the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche, both of whom play there. The firm first proposed redeveloping the lots in 2022, and received needed rezoning and other key city approvals last year.
The documents being submitted Monday include a concept plan — a preliminary document for specific structures that allows developers to hash out details with the city before committing to a site development plan that requires a higher level of specificity.
Mahoney said KSE sees the broader development in three parts. The portion closest to Speer and LoDo is an entertainment district. The middle portion, which will include ample open space, is the park district. And the westernmost third, close to a Regional Transportation District rail stop, is the transit district.
The concert venue, 244-room hotel and two apartment buildings that hold 300 units proposed Monday are considered Phase 1A and are part of the entertainment district. They would be built on nearly 4 acres bounded by Speer to the east, 11th Street to the west and Chopper Circle to the north. To the south would be a handful of buildings that face Auraria Parkway.
This parking lot is where Phase 1A’s development is expected to take place. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Mahoney said the music venue will complement Ball Arena, which already regularly hosts concerts.
“I think it fills a gap for us, a different need for us within our offerings. … This is a 5,000-seat venue, and we can squeeze it down to 1,800, 2,000. So we can really flex in that zone between 2,000 and 5,000, which is a real complement to Ball Arena, because we can’t do that size of show downtown,” he said.
The hotel will allow fans to stay next door to the action — whether at Ball Arena or the new venue — while the apartments will make the site active 24/7, Mahoney said.
Mahoney declined to give a timeline for development and cautioned that plans could change.
“We’re going through a pricing exercise right now with the general contractor community,” he said. “We’re going through this submittal process with Denver, and a lot of the feedback that we’ll be receiving over the next few months will really help determine a final outcome.”
Besides the buildings themselves, KSE spent a lot of time thinking about access to them.
Currently, many fans walking to the stadium cross Speer at Chopper Circle or Auraria Parkway, contending with the eight lanes of traffic going in both directions. That’s unsafe for all involved, Mahoney said.
“Speer is a hard barrier between downtown and this property, and solving that barrier has always been an overriding theme for the project and a goal of ours to solve from the very beginning,” he said.
The pedestrian bridge would be built south of Chopper Circle, starting on a city-owned parking lot to the east of Speer and ending on KSE-owned property to the west of it. It would sit 17 feet above the roadway, with two 18-foot wide paths. A ramp at no more than a 5% grade would allow wheelchairs and bicycles without requiring elevators.
The bridge’s aesthetic would somewhat mimic the nearby Speer bridge over Interstate 25, but with more modern touches, like openings that allow sunlight to pass through to the road and sidewalks beneath it.
On the Ball Arena side, the bridge would seamlessly connect to the second story of the four buildings and gradually descend to street level.
“Keeping them above the street at Speer and 12th, and then safely getting them down to the Ball Arena plaza was kind of an objective,” said Dan Craig, an architect with Shears Adkins Rockmore working on the project.
Developments around sports facilities are something of a national trend, which has already hit Denver with the Colorado Rockies and McGregor Square. Mahoney said he’s toured lots of those projects and taken inspiration while also crafting something unique.
“We’re not trying to do a copy/paste from other places around the country,” he said. “We’re trying to develop a district, an entertainment district, that really is of Denver and for Denver.”
Note: The area in blue is the redevelopment site. The yellow-highlighted parking lot is where the bridge crossing Speer Blvd. will originate from.
Ball Arena’s owner is looking to finalize plans for a nearly 4-acre site adjacent to the arena. (BusinessDen file)
The specifics are in for the first expected phase of development of Ball Arena’s parking lots.
In documents being submitted to Denver on Monday, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment details four buildings it thinks should kick off a development effort that will eventually extend across the stadium’s 56 acres of surface lots.
The plans call for two 12-story apartment buildings, a 13-story hotel and a roughly 5,000-seat concert venue.
The structures would tie into a bicycle and pedestrian bridge across Speer Boulevard that would better connect the arena to LoDo.
“The challenge for us is to create a … sports-anchored mixed-use neighborhood that is a place where someone would feel comfortable living 24/7, that it’s got neighborhood services and neighborhood offerings that you would find in any great neighborhood in Denver,” said Matt Mahoney, KSE’s senior vice president of development.
KSE and billionaire Stan Kroenke own the 20,000-seat arena, as well as the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche, both of whom play there. The firm first proposed redeveloping the lots in 2022, and received needed rezoning and other key city approvals last year.
The documents being submitted Monday include a concept plan — a preliminary document for specific structures that allows developers to hash out details with the city before committing to a site development plan that requires a higher level of specificity.
Mahoney said KSE sees the broader development in three parts. The portion closest to Speer and LoDo is an entertainment district. The middle portion, which will include ample open space, is the park district. And the westernmost third, close to a Regional Transportation District rail stop, is the transit district.
The concert venue, 244-room hotel and two apartment buildings that hold 300 units proposed Monday are considered Phase 1A and are part of the entertainment district. They would be built on nearly 4 acres bounded by Speer to the east, 11th Street to the west and Chopper Circle to the north. To the south would be a handful of buildings that face Auraria Parkway.
This parking lot is where Phase 1A’s development is expected to take place. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Mahoney said the music venue will complement Ball Arena, which already regularly hosts concerts.
“I think it fills a gap for us, a different need for us within our offerings. … This is a 5,000-seat venue, and we can squeeze it down to 1,800, 2,000. So we can really flex in that zone between 2,000 and 5,000, which is a real complement to Ball Arena, because we can’t do that size of show downtown,” he said.
The hotel will allow fans to stay next door to the action — whether at Ball Arena or the new venue — while the apartments will make the site active 24/7, Mahoney said.
Mahoney declined to give a timeline for development and cautioned that plans could change.
“We’re going through a pricing exercise right now with the general contractor community,” he said. “We’re going through this submittal process with Denver, and a lot of the feedback that we’ll be receiving over the next few months will really help determine a final outcome.”
Besides the buildings themselves, KSE spent a lot of time thinking about access to them.
Currently, many fans walking to the stadium cross Speer at Chopper Circle or Auraria Parkway, contending with the eight lanes of traffic going in both directions. That’s unsafe for all involved, Mahoney said.
“Speer is a hard barrier between downtown and this property, and solving that barrier has always been an overriding theme for the project and a goal of ours to solve from the very beginning,” he said.
The pedestrian bridge would be built south of Chopper Circle, starting on a city-owned parking lot to the east of Speer and ending on KSE-owned property to the west of it. It would sit 17 feet above the roadway, with two 18-foot wide paths. A ramp at no more than a 5% grade would allow wheelchairs and bicycles without requiring elevators.
The bridge’s aesthetic would somewhat mimic the nearby Speer bridge over Interstate 25, but with more modern touches, like openings that allow sunlight to pass through to the road and sidewalks beneath it.
On the Ball Arena side, the bridge would seamlessly connect to the second story of the four buildings and gradually descend to street level.
“Keeping them above the street at Speer and 12th, and then safely getting them down to the Ball Arena plaza was kind of an objective,” said Dan Craig, an architect with Shears Adkins Rockmore working on the project.
Developments around sports facilities are something of a national trend, which has already hit Denver with the Colorado Rockies and McGregor Square. Mahoney said he’s toured lots of those projects and taken inspiration while also crafting something unique.
“We’re not trying to do a copy/paste from other places around the country,” he said. “We’re trying to develop a district, an entertainment district, that really is of Denver and for Denver.”
Note: The area in blue is the redevelopment site. The yellow-highlighted parking lot is where the bridge crossing Speer Blvd. will originate from.
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