The verbal fireworks didn\u2019t begin until the second hour of a meeting that started with a peace pipe being passed around.<\/p>\n
Burnham Yard sits on land once inhabited by the Ute and Cheyenne tribes, and so one member of the 26 various constituents on the city\u2019s Small Area Plan community advisory committee offered a prayer to an Indigenous mother and the stars at a Wednesday night gathering.<\/p>\n
They prayed for peace in the La Alma Lincoln Park community. And they prayed for peace, too, in this meeting.<\/p>\n
After long enough, though, discussion grew contentious around the future of Eighth Avenue, a thoroughfare that stretches east from Sun Valley all the way to Montclair, into the Broncos\u2019 plans for a new stadium district at Burnham Yard. In late March, the Broncos submitted their initial infrastructure master plan on the Burnham redevelopment to the city and Eighth Avenue serves as a primary artery for flow in and out of the district.<\/p>\n
A section of the infrastructure master plan proposes both a curved and expanded three-lane Eighth Avenue. For nearly 30 minutes Wednesday night, the Small Area Plan community advisory committee \u2014 comprised of local community members and representatives from the Broncos, RTD and the Colorado Department of Transportation alike \u2014 deliberated on the influx and outflow of traffic that could bring to the historic La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Some were supportive. Helen Giron-Mushfiq, of the La Alma Neighborhood Association, told The Post the next day that the expansion of Eighth Avenue would be the best way to \u201cget people out of the area\u201d on game days.<\/p>\n Others were not.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like,\u201d one neighborhood-association member chimed in, \u201chow would you like your displacement to look?\u201d<\/p>\n Amid the push-and-pull, the city of Denver and the Broncos continue to march toward a Small Area Plan for the organization\u2019s new mixed-use stadium district, which the city \u2014 according to slides presented to advisory-committee members Wednesday \u2014 expects to put in front of the city council late this year .<\/p>\n \u201cThe initial submission of our Infrastructure Master Plan in March represents an early step in a collaborative, ongoing process with the city and community,\u201d Broncos chief communications officer Patrick Smyth told The Post. \u201cAs we shape this vision at Burnham Yard together, the plan will continue to evolve to best integrate with the surrounding neighborhoods and reflect community needs.\u201d<\/p>\n The initial submission shows the most detailed look yet at the organization\u2019s plans for the new stadium district at Burnham, from a proposed layout of several parking structures to a breakdown of the district\u2019s different areas.<\/p>\n At an initial community meeting hosted by the Broncos in February, plan architect Sasaki confirmed that the total size of the stadium district at Burnham had expanded to 150 acres. Two months later, the infrastructure master plan now offers a glimpse of what\u2019ll actually lie inside.<\/p>\n\n The stadium itself will take up just 30 to 35 of those acres, according to the plan. The rest will be a combination of mixed-use development (50 to 60 acres), public and private streets (25 to 30 acres), and \u201copen space\u201d (15 to 20 acres) \u2014 including a planned \u201cneighborhood park\u201d in a cluster of buildings just west of La Alma Lincoln Park and a \u201clinear park\u201d to the immediate southwest of West Sixth Ave and Osage Street. A previously outlined \u201ctailgate area\u201d has now been labeled a \u201ctailgate park,\u201d located directly south of the stadium and Eighth Avenue.<\/p>\n The plan, too, describes this Burnham development as divided into \u201cfive distinct development zones.\u201d One of them \u2014 sitting to the east of a new main north-to-south thoroughfare next to the stadium dubbed \u201cBroncos Way\u201d \u2014 is an \u201cEntertainment Zone,\u201d likely to encapsulate anything from a potential new concert venue to shopping outlets, restaurants, a hotel and more.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Entertainment Zone serves as a high-energy destination with a dense, intimate urban form and curated retail experiences,\u201d the plan reads.<\/p>\n Another area, the \u201cNorth Zone,\u201d is described as \u201cresidential in focus\u201d and \u201cdesigned to complement La Alma Lincoln Park.\u201d The Broncos have discussed building a hotel inside the district in conversations with community constituents, and connected apartment complexes have become a wider staple of modern mixed-use stadium districts.<\/p>\n From a local planning and economic perspective, The Post sent the Broncos\u2019 infrastructure master plan to Brad Segal, the director of the Denver-based real estate and planning firm Progressive Urban Management Associates<\/a>. Segal said he was \u201cparticularly struck\u201d by the Broncos\u2019 vision to preserve and renovate existing historical aspects of the railyard \u2014 such as an abandoned locomotive shop, which team officials have discussed internally developing into a food hall.\n<\/p>\n Segal, though, noted one immediate concern: the\u00a0placement of that \u201cEntertainment Zone\u201d directly adjacent to the La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood, a working-class, majority-Latino community\u00a0that experienced<\/a><\/span>\u00a0widespread displacement in the 1970s with the construction of the Auraria campus<\/a>. Those \u201cscars run deep,\u201d as Segal said \u2014 a fact clear in ongoing Small Area Plan committee discussions, as community members like Giron-Mushfiq simply aren\u2019t comfortable with any kind of large-scale development so close to a historic neighborhood.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t trust \u2019em,\u201d Giron-Mushfiq said. \u201cWe\u2019ll put it lightly.\u201d<\/p>\n There aren\u2019t many places the Broncos could reposition that district without bumping up against the neighborhood. And theoretically, that placement would allow La Alma residents to enjoy such amenities, as Segal pointed. The draw, too, could attract more foot traffic to businesses along the Art District on Santa Fe.<\/p>\n \u201cBut, if it results in pushing up housing costs, rental rates, property values \u2013 that\u2019s going to force many people to leave who maybe don\u2019t want to leave because of the economic pressure,\u201d Segal said. \u201cAnd acknowledging the history of the neighborhood and what it has already endured 50 to 60 years ago \u2014 I would say residents would be justified in fearing those types of pressures and changes moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n In the plan\u2019s executive summary, the Broncos describe the light rail station at 10th and Osage as \u201cthe district\u2019s heart\u201d and later refer to it as \u201canchoring a transit-oriented framework.\u201d<\/p>\n That would hinge on the district\u2019s ability to attract foot traffic through RTD lines<\/a>, as RTD has seen a slight bump in ridership in recent months, according to the most recent available data comparing boardings from January and February 2026<\/a> to the previous year. Community members and nearby residents, though, are heavily concerned about the impact of gameday and non-gameday traffic in the area<\/a> \u2014 including those who have reviewed the Broncos\u2019 most recent plan.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s some things that I like about it,\u201d Giron-Mushfiq said, who\u2019s on the Small Area Plan advisory committee. \u201cBut the biggest problem is they haven\u2019t really addressed the parking.\u201d<\/p>\n They do, in some sense. The plan envisions 5,000 to 7,500 available parking spaces on gamedays, with a mixture of seven different below-grade, above-ground and surface parking lots. On gameday, too, the plan anticipates a majority of traffic flow both entering the district from Eighth Avenue to the west and from Sixth Avenue to the south.<\/p>\n The Broncos, however, are proposing a slew of significant road changes with those traffic patterns: realigning West Eighth Avenue further south, removing some existing infrastructure from West Sixth Avenue, and proposing future on and off-ramps that align with planned $50 million repairs \u2014 through the Vibrant Denver Bond<\/a> \u2014 to the Sixth Avenue viaduct.<\/p>\n \u201cFor Eighth Avenue, the background traffic, the additional traffic from the development and then the complexity of the roadway \u2014 traveling over rail lines like light rail, whether it remains grade separated \u2014 there\u2019s a huge amount of complexity there and I couldn\u2019t guess how it will turn out,\u201d Stephen Wilson, a senior development project administrator with the city, told The Post. \u201cSome of them, I have a pretty good idea. I\u2019ve done this long enough where I have a pretty good sense of how it will turn out.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t tell how Eighth is going to turn out yet.\u201d<\/p>\n It is likely, though, to be one of the most high-profile infrastructure projects around the stadium and perhaps one of the most costly. The stadium itself is set to be fully paid for by the Walton-Penner Group. Infrastructure to construct roads and sidewalks around the district, however, will be funded by a combination of state and city funding, as Mayor Mike Johnston told The Post in September.<\/p>\n \u201cI see a big dollar bill right next to, \u2018How do we improve infrastructure for egress?\u2019\u201d said Geoffrey Propheter, a professor at the CU Denver School of Public Affairs and expert in stadium financing<\/a>.<\/p>\nA \u2018tailgate park,\u2019 and more information on district features<\/h4>\n
![\"Burnham](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.denverpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/TDP-L-Burnham-Yard-RJS-07333.jpg?fit=620%2C9999px&ssl=1\")
![\"Passengers](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.denverpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/TDP-L-BurnhamYardRTD-20260319-TH-09.jpg?fit=620%2C9999px&ssl=1\")
Parking and transit information, with Eighth Avenue the key<\/h4>\n
![\"Broncos](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.denverpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/TDP-L-Burnham-Yard-RJS-00931.jpg?fit=620%2C9999px&ssl=1\")