Plans to Replace the Denver Coliseum Resurface, Community Members Fight to Keep It Where It's

Plans to replace the Denver Coliseum have resurfaced as part of a broader master plan for the National Western Center campus, reigniting a dispute with nearby residents, CBS News reported.

The latest proposals from the National Western Center revive concepts from over a decade ago to construct a new 10,000-seat arena. The project forms the final phase of campus development for the site, which hosts the annual National Western Stock Show.

This concluding phase focuses on the Triangle, a 92-acre area situated north of Interstate 70. Project leaders say the goal is better integration with surrounding neighborhoods.

Mike Bouchard, executive director of Denver’s Office of the National Western Center, discussed the goals for the 92-acre site in an interview with CBS News.

“The vision for the Triangle Community Vision Plan is to imagine with the neighborhoods how this can be so much more than what has been here for the past 100 years,” Bouchard told CBS News.

Bouchard also pointed to plans for physical connectivity across the highway corridor.

“Rebuilding some of those bridges and connections, so that the campus is no longer an island but really integrated with the neighborhoods that it lives in,” Bouchard explained to CBS News.

Under the new proposal, the arena would move from its current location south of I-70 to a site north of the highway. Bouchard stated this placement is intended to make the venue “proximate to the core of the campus.”

Plans to replace the Denver Coliseum resurface, community members fight to keep it where it’s at

Voters previously rejected public funding for a new arena during a 2021 municipal election. Local residents continue to oppose the current iteration of the project.

Jessica Herrera, a community member whose family home was demolished during I-70 reconstruction projects in the 1990s, voiced strong opposition to the arena’s proposed relocation.

“We’re fighting for the arena not to be on that land where we want it to be houses and be a community, like it once was before, for generations,” Herrera told CBS News.

While project leadership maintains that affordable housing remains part of the master plan, Herrera argued that the current proposals fail to meet community desires.

“Every scenario that they gave us is at least 8 to 12 stories high,” Herrera told CBS News, adding, “We’ve told them we do not want our area looking like RiNo whatsoever. We want our community just to be houses.”

Members of the GES Coalition have developed an alternative plan that keeps the arena south of the highway. Herrera warned that the National Western Center’s preferred site would create severe logistical problems.

“They plan on putting the arena right there in the middle of Elyria, where it’s going to affect so many neighbors with not only 1,000 cars coming in and out of Elyria in the main area, also the pollution that comes with all the cars in the area,” Herrera told CBS News.

The National Western Center has conducted community outreach meetings with residents of Globeville and Elyria-Swansea over a two-year period, according to CBS News. Despite these sessions, community representatives and project officials remain at odds over the Triangle development.

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