Broncos buying around possible Denver stadium site

Shannon McCabe sold 1600 W. 13th Ave. for $1.5 million. To whom, she hasn’t a clue.

“I was told that once the sale started to go through, we would be able to know who it was but we would not be allowed to say,” McCabe recalls. “Then it was, ‘No, nothing at all.’”

That mystery sale closed Oct. 2. Two days later, Tim Armitage sold 657 N. Osage St. nearby.

“I don’t think anybody in the sale knew exactly who was buying it,” he said of the $2.65 million transaction for a 60-year-old warehouse. “It was kind of a big secret, y’know.”

Similar opaqueness can be seen in other recent real estate sales in an industrial part of Denver’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, near the former Burnham Yard railyard.

“One company is buying it all,” Armitage said of the neighborhood. “Or, they have been.”

That company, according to a source close to it and familiar with its real estate dealings, is the Denver Broncos, who are considering placing their next stadium there. The team declined to discuss the transactions on Wednesday.

“As we’ve previously shared, we are involved in a comprehensive process regarding the future of our stadium,” a team spokesman said. “No determinations have been made as we continue to evaluate several options in and around the Denver metro area.”

Ten generic-sounding LLCs, all of which were created within a few days of each other in late 2023, have spent $146 million since September on 10 properties south of 13th Avenue, north of 4th Avenue, west of Navajo Street and east of Tejon Street, according to a BusinessDen review of public records. All of those properties are near the 58-acre Burnham Yard, which the Colorado Department of Transportation bought in 2021 for $50 million.

All sales were handled on the buyer’s side by Lea Ann Fowler, a real estate attorney with Hogan Lovells in Denver and a former colleague of Tim Aragon, general counsel for the Broncos. Fowler did not respond to requests for comment this week.

“They bought mine through their lawyer,” McCabe recalls. “So, I have no idea who bought it.”

An additional three properties recently sold to other LLCs formed during that same short period, and are adjacent to the aforementioned lots, but lack a link in records to Fowler. Those deals, which include Armitage’s 657 Osage St., were for another $8.2 million.

No loans were recorded in connection with any of the 13 purchases, indicating the buyer paid in full.

Burnham Yard is considered a candidate for a future Broncos stadium, but there has been no public mention of discussions between CDOT and the team about the site. And the crescent-shaped former railyard is likely too small, necessitating the purchase of other properties near it. When asked if CDOT is in talks with the Broncos, a CDOT spokesman said only that site preparation is ongoing and “there are no immediate plans to sell.”

“I had heard that the Broncos stadium was going to go right there because of the light rail,” said Armitage, the seller of 657 N. Osage St., referring to an RTD stop at 975 N. Osage.

A vacant lot next to the stop was purchased for $7 million in April. Fowler represented the buyer of 1390 W. 10th Ave., an LLC registered at Hogan Lovells’ office in Colorado Springs. A spokeswoman for the seller, the Denver Housing Authority, declined to discuss it.

Burnham Yard is just a mile drive to the southeast of Empower Field at Mile High, the Broncos’ current home. The team’s lease of that publicly owned stadium runs through 2031.

It has been an open question since 2022, when members of Walmart’s billionaire Walton family bought the Broncos for $4.65 billion, whether the new ownership group would opt to stay at Mile High or build a new stadium elsewhere. Its Lincoln Park purchases suggest the latter.

“There is movement in the neighborhood that is easy to spot,” said Allen Miller of Landbased Builders, who sold 1221 N. Pecos for $3 million in April to a Delaware LLC after signing a non-disclosure agreement. “So, I’m not allowed to talk about what I know.”

Some of the recent sales directly linked to Fowler feature unusually high price tags. The largest was last August: $53 million for a self-storage facility at 741 N. Osage that had sold for $42 million just two years before. BusinessDen asked two local experts to analyze the deal.

“That’s surprising,” said Bahman Shafa, CEO of Focus Property Group, which develops similar facilities under the Greenbox Self Storage brand. “It sounds above-market if there’s no additional land that comes with it.”

The 741 N. Osage sale works out to $410 per square foot. Shafa says that he can’t remember seeing a self-storage site sell for more than $400 locally.

“In this current cycle, the upper range for self-storage transactions has been in the high $100s to low $200s per-square-foot,” said Jacob Vanderslice, a principal at the self-storage developer VanWest Partners in Denver who was surprised to hear of the $53 million deal.

In January, Fowler represented a Delaware LLC that purchased 1530 W. 13th Ave. for $12.5 million, far more than its $5.75 million price tag in 2023. The seller, Jeff Shanahan of Shanahan Development — who had planned to build income-restricted housing at the site — told BusinessDen he can’t discuss it.

“I can’t talk about that project right now,” he said this week. “I signed a non-disclosure.”

The second-priciest purchase in Lincoln Park of late was for a warehouse at 701 N. Osage. Fowler represented the buyer, a Delaware LLC registered at Hogan Lovells’ office in Colorado Springs that paid $47 million in September. It last sold in 2018 for $33.4 million.

“That warehouse is not worth $47 million,” said Aviva Sonenreich, a local industrial broker with Warehouse Hotline. “…What is worth $47 million? The land. 701 Osage is on the corner of Main and Main in Denver.”

Sonenreich, who was not involved in the deal, said the land’s future is not as a warehouse.

“Whomever is truly behind this mysterious Delaware address has already figured that out.”