Sometimes, sitting at his desk, Sean Payton will get lost in daydreams outside his window. He can see it. Not far across the sky, beyond the glass of his third-floor office in Dove Valley, the boom of a crimson crane places pieces of timber on the Broncos’ new identity.
In a year, this $175 million project will be complete, and the new team headquarters the Broncos have touted since 2023 will be buzzing with the operations of a rising NFL franchise. For now, it is a hunk of wood and steel, hammers echoing across the grass at Broncos Park. But Payton still finds himself mesmerized on occasion. Then he’ll snap back to watching tape of a championship foundation he’s trying to construct himself.
In March, general manager George Paton put up an easel in his office with a large rendering of the facility. The idea: Let visiting free agents see what’s coming, in all its sandstone glory.
“I know they’re trying to leverage that,” team president Damani Leech told The Denver Post, “as much as possible.”
Come May 2026, the Broncos will finally see the finished jewel of the early Walton-Penner ownership era. It is on schedule, a remarkably quick undertaking from its announcement in November 2023. It is on budget, thanks in part to the cost maneuvering of senior VP of construction Amy Dee. And it is a short-term lift in league standing for a franchise that, as Payton said, has become an “attractive spot” for players and coaches alike.
But this plan went far beyond Payton, Paton or any current era. Two years ago, when Leech and ownership first pitched a new facility to staff, they played a clip of an old NFL Films piece that went inside the Broncos’ current business headquarters, which opened in 1990. Late head coach Dan Reeves was in the video wearing a 1980s-era sweater. A voiceover lauded a state-of-the-art film room that, of course, used physical film.
The message was clear: The game and the league have evolved. And Leech, Dee, and ownership envisioned a facility that can itself evolve with NFL generations to come.
“How does a workplace — and, or, football space to an extent — keep reinventing themselves? Because if you don’t, then it’s just going to be stagnant,” Dee told The Post.
“We’re building a monument. We’re building something … that’s going to be, for decades, part of a changing organization.”
Leech knew Greg Penner and Carrie Walton Penner were “curious about” constructing a new team headquarters soon after he was named team president in August 2022. Research began from there, with Leech and constituents touring NFL facilities in Miami, Dallas and Minnesota, as well as newly-constructed NBA headquarters for the Golden State Warriors (opened in 2021) and San Antonio Spurs (2023).
In time, plans formed for a space that would consolidate business operations and football staff. Leech noted that 70 Broncos team employees are currently based at Empower Field, 20 miles north of Dove Valley, because space is too tight at the current headquarters. Players themselves have to walk across the parking lot from the weight room to the locker room, and across practice fields to the indoor facility.
One of design partner HOK’s first steps, Leech said, was to measure the number of steps players needed to take to move between the three areas. They discovered “massive spikes” compared to a half-dozen other facilities across the league.
“The biggest was, ‘How do we create a space that has the most minimal player path of travel for our team?'” Leech said.
A small detail, it might seem. A large one, when added over the course of a season. And the Walton-Penner group has invested many millions of dollars in such small details since taking over the franchise.
“It’s a great credit to Greg and Carrie and their vision,” Payton said. “Not just short-term, but for years to come.”
Dee was hired to oversee construction a few months after the project’s announcement. The organization felt it needed an in-house captain after previously routing operations through an outside agency. Dee was immediately faced with a slew of budgetary questions.
She came from a job as the chief construction officer at Powder Mountain, a ski resort on top of a mountain in Utah. She expanded Netflix campuses into Europe and South America. This facility in Denver was far from her largest undertaking.
“I’ve built a lot of one-offs,” Dee reflected. “And so, I do like building things that are very unique.”
Dee’s greatest impact has been to fine-tune project musts to stay under budget, even as new administration under President Donald Trump has enacted a range of tariffs on imported goods, including a 25% tariff on steel. Dee hasn’t hedged on preferred materials, but has had to change suppliers to maneuver around increased costs.
“I certainly don’t have a budget for tariffs,” Dee said. “Let’s put it that way.”
Overall, though, the Broncos are sourcing a “good percentage” of materials from Colorado-based distributors, Dee said. Ownership, Dee and Leech said, pushed for construction costs to contribute to the local economy.
“We want this to feel like it’s of the place — it’s of here, when you walk in the building,” Leech said. “It’s not just, ‘This is the Denver Broncos,’ but this is also a building that’s in Colorado.”
Beyond that, Dee has also implemented a flexible interior design. Much of the facility will be built with modular walls and easily movable weight room equipment to make sure the foundation can last as long as possible.
“Does the outside need to change? You kinda build that to where it’s a classic style, it’s very Colorado, it’ll live forever,” Dee said. “But if we can change the inside, why wouldn’t you just keep using the same building, right? So, make it adaptable.”
On July 31, a day before the highest beam was placed on the facility, Penner and Walton Penner tightened up hard hats and climbed rung-over-rung roughly 20 stories up the crane. They strolled out on the catwalk of the counter boom, and Walton Penner snapped a picture of a lofty view. She texted it to Payton.
“I just said, ‘No thank you,'” Payton grinned.
The future lay 200 feet below, a whole new world for Payton — and years beyond.
Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.
from The Denver Post https://ift.tt/91Qnv5A
via IFTTT
Comments
Post a Comment