The $1 billion National Western Center project in Denver is short on money to build a major equestrian center promised as part of the master plan. Now officials are looking to a hotel to generate m…
Construction is underway on the site of a livestock center and National Western Stock Show legacy building at the National Western Center in Denver on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023. have a 17-acre void on their project map — with a glaring funding gap that threatens one of the marquee components of the city-led undertaking, now years delayed and significantly beyond its budget.
This partnership idea is the latest gambit for project and city leaders as they’ve worked to make the campus vision a reality. They previously weatheredNow the National Western Center project stands at a crossroads. Key promises to the surrounding community are unfulfilled, due in part to escalating costs and an unforeseen pandemic.
A $25 million pedestrian bridge over the rail lines and a second new vehicle bridge over the South Platte River both show to-be-determined completion dates on the project dashboard. Construction leaders say those are funded, though they plan to request $10 million in federal support for the pedestrian crossing.
“I know the city needs to make a significant amount of sales tax and a significant amount of revenue,” said Nola Miguel, a longtime leader with the Globeville, Elyria-Swansea Coalition Organizing for Health and Housing Justice. “But as long as the neighborhoods are in disarray, it’s not going to be successful. All of our destinies are intertwined.”
A request for proposals is expected to go out before the end of October, according to officials with that entity, a nonprofit tasked with managing, booking and keeping up the sprawling city-owned campus for the next 100 years. The scale of the National Western Center plan has always been immense — and it’s faced big challenges from the start. After the city acquired homes and businesses around the Stock Show’s existing footprint, it had to untangle railroad tracks running through the site and bury two large, above-ground sewage pipes that ran along the South Platte.
A majority of that money — $688 million — has come from bonds backed by the indefinite extension of the city’s lodging and car rental taxes. City voters signed off on that funding stream in 2015 when 66% of them supported Referred Question 2C. As for the long-coveted 10,000-seat arena that partners have argued the campus needs to replace the 72-year-old Denver Coliseum? Johnston suggested a new entity might be interested in being a partner on such a venue.
“We anticipate the livestock completing in 2025 … and the pedestrian bridge right now is scheduled to be completed sometime in ’26,” Bouchard said.Campus partners voiced optimism that the $5 million effort to dig into market opportunities and entice bids from private sector contractors will get that missing piece back on the project schedule.
“CSU Spur needs the neighboring components of the NWC to be completed to reach its full potential,” Jocelyn Hittle, the university’s associate vice chancellor, said in a statement. “The integration of our facilities with the offerings of the campus is critical for some of our programs.” But his organization is also feeling the effects of construction cost increases in recent years. The projected budget for its Legacy building, a 100,000-square-foot facility that’s set to border and connect to the livestock center that’s now under construction, has risen from $50 million to closer to $90 million, Andrews said.
The overlook onto I-70 near the cover park on Nov. 30, 2022, in Denver. Denver’s growth in the years since the National Western project got underway has only worsened fears of economic displacement for the people in those majority-Latino neighborhoods, said Miguel, from the GES Coalition. The median household income in the 80216 ZIP code is 12% lower than that of the city as a whole, according to census data.
“Of course, the new campus gets sidewalks and lighting. We have not. They get sustainable energy options. We have not,” said Ana Varela, a co-director of the GES Coalition group. “I do not feel that a boutique hotel or equestrian center would serve the GES neighborhoods in any meaningful way.” Carroll sees maintaining housing affordability in that part of the city and ensuring that infrastructure improvements extend past campus borders as ways to do that.
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