The Broncos moving their stadium out of Denver would be a huge mistake

The Denver Broncos feel like they’re closer and closer to announcing plans for a new stadium.

Moving it out of the city would be a huge mistake.

This team is called the Denver Broncos. Not the Lone Tree Broncos. Not the Aurora Broncos. Not the Strasburg Broncos. The Denver Broncos.

But when owner and CEO Greg Penner met with the media at the NFL’s annual meetings on Monday, he wasn’t totally committed to keeping the team playing its home games in Denver. In fact, after he floated Lone Tree a couple of months ago,  Penner has now added Aurora to that list.

“We haven’t ruled anything out. We’re still looking at the current site, other sites around Denver, Lone Tree, Aurora. We don’t have a set timetable for making a decision,” Penner said. 

Look, it’s good Penner isn’t ruling anything out. Including keeping the team’s possible new stadium in the state capitol. But the longer this process goes, the more it feels like the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group (WPFOG) is going to move the team to the South or East.

That would be a miscalculation.

Since buying the Broncos, the WPFOG has been great. Let’s make that clear from the jump. They’re building a whole new practice facility at Broncos Park Powered by CommonSpirit. They replaced bad turf at Empower Field at Mile High multiple times. Heck, the WPFOG took on the largest dead cap hit in NFL history to dump Russell Wilson.

They’ve made a lot of decisions and almost every single one has been the correct one. Taking the Broncos to a different part of town would be a rare, and big, misstep.

When the Broncos host an AFC Title Game, do you want blimp shots of downtown Denver or an “entertainment district” built on an empty field by the airport or a mall? The answer should be obvious. This team identifies with the city, not some fancy new area designed as a money making machine.

The simplest solution is to buy Elitch Gardens from the Kroenke family, move the theme park or knock it down, and build a state of the art new stadium there. Heck, Stan Kroenke’s wife, Anne Walton Kroenke, is cousins with Rob Walton. Rob isn’t the front facing day-to-day CEO like Penner, but he is part of the WPFOG. It’s family. Find a way to make a deal.

Sure, we’ve got plans for a massive expansion around Ball Arena, but a new football stadium in that area would benefit everyone. Both families would make a lot of coin if there was one sprawling setup that connected the football stadium with the basketball and hockey arena.

In a time where downtown Denver is struggling, it’d be a real shame to lose something like this. We need to be investing in the city, not fleeing like a lot of other businesses, forced to make brutal decisions in a post-COVID world.

The WPFOG has enough money to construct this thing anywhere. Doing it somewhere within the city limits of Denver should mean something. There’s too much Broncos history associated with playing and winning some of the biggest games in franchise history downtown.

“If we’re going to do development, which as you know, there is a plan on our current site for development, so that’s certainly an option that would go around the stadium,” Penner said on Monday. 

That’s more on the right track, but with all due respect to Empower Field at Mile High, a new stadium is needed. It’s just where that stadium is that so many people are so passionate about.

Here’s to hoping that development gets done somewhere in Denver. That’s who the Broncos are, and their identity should remain that way for decades to come.