A large crowd works its way into the stadium to watch a Denver Broncos game at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver on Nov. 17, 2024. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
While the Denver Broncos continue to profess their interest in Aurora and Lone Tree as possible locales for a future stadium, no publicly available evidence suggests they have bought land and are having high-level talks with city officials the way they are in Denver.
Six requests for government records that BusinessDen filed show no written communications — emails, texts, meeting invitations — regarding a possible stadium between the team and city officials from Aurora, Lone Tree, Adams County or Douglas County in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
“Requests submitted to the city by multiple news organizations did not produce any responsive records regarding interactions between the Denver Broncos and Aurora city officials,” Joe Rubino, a spokesman for that city, told BusinessDen in a statement last week.
“The responses to the CORA requests speak for themselves,” Rubino said, referring to the Colorado Open Records Act, “and it would be improper for us to speculate further.”
In June, BusinessDen first reported that the Broncos had quietly purchased $150 million worth of real estate near Burnham Yard, a state-owned site in Denver’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. Without denying the purchases, the Broncos have stressed over the past two months that they are still weighing several options, including construction of a stadium outside Denver.
“In addition to Denver, we’ve engaged in numerous discussions with city officials and private landowners from both Lone Tree and Aurora in recent months as part of our stadium due diligence,” Broncos spokesman Patrick Smyth said Monday. “While no determinations have been made, we are continuing a comprehensive and deliberate evaluation of all potential options.”
“We have not made any decisions about a preferred site,” team President Damani Leech told reporters July 26. “What you’ve heard from us is really at a city level. City conversations, city viewing. Denver, Aurora, Lone Tree. Beyond that … no decisions have been made.”
But those city conversations and city-level talks are wholly absent from documents in the possession of the city of Aurora and city of Lone Tree. The only communications between the latter and the Broncos were in January, when a Lone Tree police officer asked the team about a possible internship for a colleague’s daughter, and an email exchange in March 2024.
“Chief Wilson, this is Keith Bishop over at the Broncos. I would like to speak with you when you have a free moment,” wrote Bishop, a lineman for the Broncos in the 1980s who then spent 20 years in federal law enforcement and is now the team’s vice president of security.
“We have a new player who is residing in Lone Tree, and because of a bad decision, is now the victim of (an) attempted extortion scheme,” Bishop wrote to the city police chief. “I wanted to run it by you and get your advice on, if this continues, the response from your department.”
Back-channel conversations could be happening. In the case of Aurora, the Broncos have interacted with the Aurora Economic Development Council, a private company exempt from records laws.
“The only thing that I can confirm is that we have talked to the Broncos,” Wendy Mitchell, the organization’s CEO, said by phone Monday, before refusing to elaborate on when those talks occurred or whether they concerned a stadium.
In Denver, by contrast, the team has met with members of Mayor Mike Johnston’s staff and the CEO of Denver Water, which owns land in Lincoln Park, BusinessDen first reported in June.
“I’ve talked to the Broncos every week for the last two years,” Johnston told City Cast last week. “I talk to them a lot about all sorts of things in the same way that I talk about a lot of projects. … We have been working with them for a long time on multiple potential sites.”
A large crowd works its way into the stadium to watch a Denver Broncos game at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver on Nov. 17, 2024. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
While the Denver Broncos continue to profess their interest in Aurora and Lone Tree as possible locales for a future stadium, no publicly available evidence suggests they have bought land and are having high-level talks with city officials the way they are in Denver.
Six requests for government records that BusinessDen filed show no written communications — emails, texts, meeting invitations — regarding a possible stadium between the team and city officials from Aurora, Lone Tree, Adams County or Douglas County in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
“Requests submitted to the city by multiple news organizations did not produce any responsive records regarding interactions between the Denver Broncos and Aurora city officials,” Joe Rubino, a spokesman for that city, told BusinessDen in a statement last week.
“The responses to the CORA requests speak for themselves,” Rubino said, referring to the Colorado Open Records Act, “and it would be improper for us to speculate further.”
In June, BusinessDen first reported that the Broncos had quietly purchased $150 million worth of real estate near Burnham Yard, a state-owned site in Denver’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. Without denying the purchases, the Broncos have stressed over the past two months that they are still weighing several options, including construction of a stadium outside Denver.
“In addition to Denver, we’ve engaged in numerous discussions with city officials and private landowners from both Lone Tree and Aurora in recent months as part of our stadium due diligence,” Broncos spokesman Patrick Smyth said Monday. “While no determinations have been made, we are continuing a comprehensive and deliberate evaluation of all potential options.”
“We have not made any decisions about a preferred site,” team President Damani Leech told reporters July 26. “What you’ve heard from us is really at a city level. City conversations, city viewing. Denver, Aurora, Lone Tree. Beyond that … no decisions have been made.”
But those city conversations and city-level talks are wholly absent from documents in the possession of the city of Aurora and city of Lone Tree. The only communications between the latter and the Broncos were in January, when a Lone Tree police officer asked the team about a possible internship for a colleague’s daughter, and an email exchange in March 2024.
“Chief Wilson, this is Keith Bishop over at the Broncos. I would like to speak with you when you have a free moment,” wrote Bishop, a lineman for the Broncos in the 1980s who then spent 20 years in federal law enforcement and is now the team’s vice president of security.
“We have a new player who is residing in Lone Tree, and because of a bad decision, is now the victim of (an) attempted extortion scheme,” Bishop wrote to the city police chief. “I wanted to run it by you and get your advice on, if this continues, the response from your department.”
Back-channel conversations could be happening. In the case of Aurora, the Broncos have interacted with the Aurora Economic Development Council, a private company exempt from records laws.
“The only thing that I can confirm is that we have talked to the Broncos,” Wendy Mitchell, the organization’s CEO, said by phone Monday, before refusing to elaborate on when those talks occurred or whether they concerned a stadium.
In Denver, by contrast, the team has met with members of Mayor Mike Johnston’s staff and the CEO of Denver Water, which owns land in Lincoln Park, BusinessDen first reported in June.
“I’ve talked to the Broncos every week for the last two years,” Johnston told City Cast last week. “I talk to them a lot about all sorts of things in the same way that I talk about a lot of projects. … We have been working with them for a long time on multiple potential sites.”
