DENVER (KDVR) — On Tuesday, the Denver Broncos announced they have found the preferred site for a new stadium to be built at Burnham Yard. It’s an exciting progression for the team and the city, but some long-time Broncos fans may be left wondering, “Didn’t we just build Empower Field?”
When you look at other NFL teams, the fact that the Broncos may already have a new stadium on the way is a bit of an oddity, considering that Empower Field at Mile High construction was completed in 2001.
There is a wide variety of stadium ages in the NFL, with some closer to being a century old and others still in their infancy. Some teams prefer to honor the legacy of their ancient stadium, renovating while preserving the memories that have been made for generations. While others felt like their stadium had done its time, and upgraded to a newer, more technologically advanced stadium.
The Broncos fall into the latter half of those two categories, but the reason it’s so bizarre is that the team had already kind of done that with Empower Field.
A formula that most NFL teams have followed starts with the team playing in a temporary home during the early stages of the franchise, before they got their dedicated stadium just for them. After playing in that stadium for multiple decades, they would get their most advanced stadium.
For the Broncos, their temporary home at the start of the franchise in 1960 would have been Bears Stadium, shared with the Denver Bears baseball team. The first dedicated stadium came when the city bought Bears Stadium, renovated and expanded it into Mile High Stadium specifically for the Broncos in 1968. Then the more advanced stadium would have been Empower Field in 2001.
While the Broncos aren’t the lone team to be in this position, most other teams are still at the Empower Field stage and have no intention of moving on to a new stadium for quite some time.
Why do the Broncos want a new stadium?
Privately owned
Empower Field at Mile High was primarily paid for with taxpayers’ money. In 1998, Referendum 4A was passed by Denver metro voters, who were in favor of a new stadium replacing Mile High Stadium. The state paid for 75% of the stadium cost, and the Broncos the remaining 25%.
Being publicly owned, none of the surrounding area could be developed. Now, the private funding from the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group will allow the real estate around the stadium to be developed.
The group will do precisely that and said a “transit-oriented” neighborhood will be created, including multi-modal transit options, walkable distances and is adjacent to public transportation.
The roof issue
In 2001, some stadiums were starting to dabble with retractable roofs, but it definitely wasn’t common practice at the time.
Empower Field primarily serves as the home of the Broncos, but also hosts events like concerts. All in good fun, but as a spectator, some fans would prefer not to be at the mercy of the fickle Colorado weather.
A retractable roof would help make the new stadium impermeable to severe weather, meaning that more events could be put on inside the stadium. Relish those trademark snowy Broncos games, because in a couple of years, they might be a thing of the past.
The roof will also be a major component in the next section.
Hosting the Super Bowl
A Super Bowl can bring millions of eyes and billions of dollars to a city.
One example of the phenomenon is Super Bowl LVIII, hosted in Las Vegas. Forbes said that the Super Bowl triggered $1 billion worth of spending in the city and had visitors doubling the expenses of a typical trip outside of Super Bowl times.
The NFL has a list of requirements to host a Super Bowl, one of which is having a retractable roof. That will be a major factor in the stadium’s construction, but it’s not a fix-all remedy.
Plenty of other infrastructure criteria inside the stadium, as well as in the surrounding area of the city, must be up to par in order to host a Super Bowl.
The potential of a new, privately-owned stadium could help bring economic growth on a day-to-day basis with its development of the area around the stadium, and has the possibility to bring that in tenfold if Denver were to host the Super Bowl.
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