Kroenke Submits First Formal Development Plan For Ball Arena
Kroenke Sports & Entertainment submitted formal concept plans on April 21 for its redevelopment of Ball Arena and surrounding parking lots.
The plans, filed with the city of Denver and subject to change, call for a hotel, a performance venue, two multifamily towers and a pedestrian bridge over Speer Boulevard, according to public records reported by the Denver Business Journal.
The filing marks the first real movement since Denver City Council approved a sweeping rezoning and viewplane exemption last fall, clearing the way for towers as tall as 40 stories and as many as 6,000 new housing units in what is now a sea of surface parking.
Bisnow previously reported that Kroenke laid the groundwork for the project over nearly five years, securing control of the land under Ball Arena and shepherding the politically tricky viewplane change through council.
Under the submitted plans for what's named Phase 1A, the 3.7-acre site that is now the arena’s Tundra parking lot at 1000 Chopper Circle would see a 244-room hotel, a 174K SF entertainment venue and 300 apartments rise above an underground parking garage.
The project has been approved for a venue that could seat as many as 5,000 people. The residential buildings would reach 12 stories, with ground-floor retail and a mix of studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom units. The hotel would be 13 stories.
The Wynkoop Crossing Pedestrian Bridge would link the arena area to Lower Downtown, a key connectivity piece for what city officials envision as a new extension of downtown over the coming decades.
While construction on Phase 1A could start as early as 2026, the full Ball Arena redevelopment — including thousands of new homes, hundreds more hotel rooms, retail, a recreation center, a childcare facility and a public park — is expected to take about 25 years to complete.
