Beyond The Sports Bar: How To Make Denver's Stadium Districts Successful

Major league sports owners in Denver, along with economic development officials and city boosters, want the Mile High City to join the ranks of sporting home teams across the country that have bulked up the area around their stadiums.

Most of Denver’s major sports venues are expected to receive such an upgrade in coming years, but the formula for making a stadium district development successful is changing along with the city centers that usually house arenas. 

“There’s a big tendency in a lot of other cities and similar-type developments to overload the areas surrounding sports stadiums with sports bars,” Denver-based Stantec principal and Studio Leader David Carnicelli told Bisnow. 

But that idea has changed, he said. Instead of a row of beer-soaked taverns, successful stadium districts need to include a variety of options, including family-friendly options, green space and local, curated retail that feels authentic to the city.

With at least three major stadium district developments in some stage of preparation across metro Denver, the way the projects are planned and executed will have major impacts on several neighborhoods and thousands of residents, as well as surrounding businesses. Areas around Empower Field at Mile High, in Denver’s Sun Valley neighborhood; Ball Arena in downtown Denver; and Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City are all on the docket for a revamp.

Carnicelli and Stantec implemented some newer stadium district concepts when working on the one major stadium district that has been completed in Denver: McGregor Square near Coors Field, home to the Colorado Rockies.

“So making sure that families feel safe and secure bringing their kids there is really important,” he said. “And then that mix of use. We tried to maximize the amount of retail and the retail touch points. So that draws people in.”

McGregor Square incorporates office and apartments on upper floors with retail uses, including restaurants and shops. Perhaps the most unique element is what Stantec called the “content plaza” during the development process. The project includes two buildings with a diagonal alley running between them, which opens up to a faux-grass plaza complete with seating areas, children’s play areas and a 66-foot by 22-foot LED screen where visitors can watch the Rockies and other local teams. 

Including open, public space, particularly if it’s green — even if the foliage is artificial — is an important detail that can easily be missed when working on these projects that are so frequently found in the concrete jungle, said John Begert, principal at MRP Realty in Washington D.C. MRP developed Dock 79, a mixed-use project adjacent to Nationals Park.

“Open space, park space: I think that’s an important space that sometimes gets overlooked,” he said. Including lively public space can not only serve as a draw for visitors, he said, but an amenity that can be marketed to apartment dwellers in the residential component of projects as well.

In addition to green space, successful stadium districts share two more characteristics, according to Begert. First, each of the cities worked to make the zoning requirements as straightforward as possible, which gave developers clear guidelines about what kinds of buildings could be built. The projects also include retail mixes that connect with the community.  

For instance, The Battery near Braves Stadium in Atlanta includes local retailers and restaurants like Jeni’s Ice Creams and Antico Pizza. Wrigleyville in Chicago often hosts concert series and several Cubs-themed events throughout the year. 

“All of these places used to rely on the seasonality of baseball crowds, but now there are opportunities for people to build businesses around the increased foot traffic volume that they’re seeing now,” Begert said. 

To Begert, these developments could also be critical for cities as they continue to re-emerge from their pandemic-induced slumber. Not only will they bring more people to downtown areas, but they can also help stabilize a city’s tax base by attracting new businesses and home sales as well. 

It’s a boost downtown Denver could use in order to regain its pre-pandemic position, according to foot traffic data from the Downtown Denver Partnership.

As of September, there were roughly 220,000 pedestrian visits to downtown, a roughly 10% increase year-over-year, according to DDP. However, pedestrian traffic overall is down about 17% when compared to its pre-pandemic levels in 2019. 

But it’s not a quick fix.

“A lot of cities are looking at this, but it may take a decade or more to really see the results,” Begert said.  

Proposed developments like River Mile near Ball Arena or the Mile High Stadium District near Empower Field plan to include the features that Begert mentioned. River Mile is planned to have about 350K SF of outdoor and community space to complement more than 5M SF of residences and 6M SF of office space, according to the project’s website. The Stadium District Master Plan for the area around Empower Field also includes riverfront open space as well as an entertainment district on the 58-acre site.

Getting developments of this magnitude off the ground is no small task. Denver’s City Council approved the rezoning for the River Mile development in 2018, but the project is not expected to be completed for at least two decades, Denver7 reported in June. Development around Empower Field could take a similar amount of time, Denverite reported in August. 

And in Commerce City, which is where Dick's Sporting Goods Park is located, officials are still wrangling with team and venue ownership. Commerce City has been trying to develop a strip of land near the stadium known as Victory Park in conjunction with Stan Kroenke, owner of the Colorado Rapids soccer team, which plays at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.

The land remains vacant, but recently the project saw a small sign of life: The Commerce City Council on Oct. 16 agreed to support a commercial real estate development competition for local college students to create a comprehensive design for Victory Park. 

Commerce City City Manager Jason Rogers said the city is “still in the early stages” of developing the land even though it has been negotiating with KSE for several years.