Overview:
On July 17, nearly 100 citizens attended a town hall to learn more about the new women's soccer stadium and share feedback on the project
On a recent summer night at Town Hall Collective, drinks were flowing, neighbors were chatting and everyone was grateful for a respite from the late July heat. Approximately 120 Denver residents packed the Santa Fe watering hole on Thursday, July 17, to discuss something unprecedented: the city’s first professional women’s soccer stadium.
“We have a phrase that we use a lot in my work that if she can see it, she can be it,” said Baker resident Mia Golin. Golin, who works with the youth-focused nonprofit Soccer Without Borders, believes this will be extremely beneficial for Denver girls. “I think that is going to be life-changing in ways that most of us probably couldn’t predict, and we won’t fully understand until some of those kids are probably, like, 20-something years old and all of a sudden it’s just normal for all of them.”
The National Women’s Soccer League announced that Denver had won the bid for its next franchise in January; in March, the Denver team’s ownership group shared its plans to build a 14,500-seat stadium to house Denver Summit FC, whose name was announced on Monday, July 21, at the Santa Fe yards. The stadium is on track to open in March 2028 according to franchise owner, Rob Cohen. In the meantime, the Denver Summit will play at a temporary stadium in Centennial, which will open in the spring of 2026.
The ownership group is currently working with community leaders from surrounding neighborhoods, Athmar Park, Overland Park, Platt Park, Baker, Valverde and Ruby Hill, to finalize a Community Benefit Agreement (CBA) by late summer or early fall. City council will vote on whether to approve the $70 million appropriation and rezoning plans this November. If everything goes according to plan, construction on the stadium will break ground in 2026.
Cohen kicked off Thursday’s meeting with remarks detailing why the NWSL chose Denver to host its next franchise: Denver, he said, was a prime sports market, offered a diverse ownership group of investors with concrete ties to the community, was focused on building infrastructure specifically engineered for women’s sports and able to invest in that infrastructure.
“One of the goals for us was to make the largest investment that’s ever been made in women’s sports, not because it’s something huge to do, but that’s how you create the returns. You have to build performance and training centers for them similar to what we built for men’s teams,” Cohen told the crowd. “One of the things the ownership group has talked about is, you know, we shouldn’t do this if we don’t want to win. Our goal is to win day one.”
Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez, Sun Valley Community Coalition President Jeanne Granville and Lukas Hagen of the Neighborhood Development Collective, which is assisting with the CBA, also gave remarks about tax increment financing (TIF), CBA logistics and the site and neighborhood’s history and significance to Southwest Denver.
Community concerns
While residents were stoked about the stadium, they had lots of questions about the project timeline, traffic, the site’s history of environmental contamination and the authenticity of the franchise’s community engagement efforts.
The CBA’s accelerated timeline of just a few months definitely raised some eyebrows. Hagen said the CBA committees are working hard to pull together the agreement before the city council vote in November, an extension over Cohen’s “late summer/early fall” estimate given earlier in the meeting; Golin said she was “fascinated” by how this was going to work.
“Born and raised in Colorado, so I know that construction never goes to plan here, even for a house. So a stadium?” Golin questioned. “I would be curious to hear a bit more about, like, how do you pull off accelerating a timeline like that and still achieve the level of quality that you’re looking for?”
This was echoed by Five Points resident Dazha Creal, who also saw this as a potential obstacle for community engagement. “Obviously, hindsight is 20/20, but (I) wish they had engaged earlier, understanding the timeline that the city is working with for rezoning to give more time for community input on the front end and not after everything’s been decided,” Creal added, noting that community support at council meetings is typically an incentive for developers to listen to residents’ concerns.
Adriana Lopez, head of the Valverde Neighborhood Association, called the development a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity for collaboration between East and West Denver communities and for major investment in Southwest Denver.
But Lopez was hesitant about the franchise’s do-good messaging and said she hoped to see “authentic” community engagement and was “very curious about community-first and equity considerations.” Despite the franchise’s past efforts, including a community meeting in Athmar Park on June 25, Lopez said most people in Valverde didn’t know about the stadium at all.
“Traditionally, a lot of BIPOC communities have been left out of major development projects,” Lopez said. “So when we say authentic, we mean really engaging with every community member possible and really making sure that the outreach, at least on behalf of the league, is thinking about the people who are not in the room who the stadium is going to affect and making sure that they are also being brought and folded into this project.”
Lopez recommended posting information in Spanish in Latino-owned businesses and rec centers in Valverde and other Latino-majority neighborhoods. “Making sure that the community has a voice in not only in the development of the stadium and the surrounding areas, but that it’s going to bring value and it’s going to be a beneficial relationship for both the stadium, the league, the ownership and the players and community members, parents, families, students and neighbors,” Lopez said.
Mobility study
Another major concern was the logistics of public transit and traffic around the stadium. The Santa Fe yards lie at the intersection of I-25, Santa Fe and Broadway, just a few miles south of the intersection of 6th and I-25, a consistent traffic hotspot.
“We are privileged enough to be very close to it, but we’re big fans of public transit and bike commuting, so (we’re) curious to see what that looks like for getting thousands and thousands of people to this one spot and the accessibility around that,” Golin said.
The stadium plans do not include a parking garage, and the city has set aside $20 million of the $70 million IGA appropriation to go towards infrastructure and mobility-related projects to improve accessibility around the stadium. The remaining $50 million will be used to purchase the land itself, which the city will own.
Ownership group rep Frank Cannon said the group had enlisted OV Consulting to conduct a mobility study to inform the allocation of the $20 million—set to wrap up in four to five months, the study will analyze traffic patterns, including transit, biking, pedestrian activity, ride share operations and stadium employee operations, to determine mobility priorities. The ownership group, Cannon added, will work with CCD, CDOT and RTD to prepare specific game-day operations plans.
Hopes for the future
Despite the concern over “buzzwords” like community engagement, a spotty environmental history and the project’s tight timeline, attendees remained enthusiastic and hopeful that the franchise would take their concerns into account.
“We have the opportunity to do this right,” Lopez said. “Obviously, the league will make decisions on its own, as they should; this is kind of their baby. But there will be an opportunity to have equal footing with the community to make sure that their voices are heard (too) because it’s been a really long time since we have had this level of a project dropped right into the community in that specific site.”
Golin also hoped to see collaboration with local businesses, proposing that they provide concessions to patrons. But overall, she was optimistic.
“Getting to hear some of the accountability pieces, too, is really nice, especially since I think those are easy things to say,” Golin said. “There’s a valid business side to it, and you can hear from (Cohen) talking about it that he actually does care about this, too. It’s not just buzzwords … I have a lot of hope that the stadium will revitalize some areas, especially the exact spot that it’s going into, and amplify what’s already here versus bringing new people in.”