The Four Places Broomfield Calls Its Next Downtown, And What's Actually There Right Now

Broomfield's city website has a page called "Developing Places." It lists four projects, side by side, with the same optimistic language about gathering spaces and community hubs. If you've only glanced at that page, or heard the names in passing at a neighborhood meeting, you'd be forgiven for assuming they're all moving at roughly the same pace.

They are not. One has a construction crew on site right now. One has an approved plat and a grocery store rumored on the renderings. One is stuck behind a permit technicality with a deadline that lands in less than two weeks. And one is still the same dirt lot it's been since the wrecking crews left in 2025, because not a single developer bothered to bid on it.

Here's what each one actually looks like as of this month, and why the gap between the four matters more than the branding that lumps them together.

The Scorecard

The Lot Nobody Wants

Drive along US 36 past Wadsworth Parkway and the site of the old Broomfield Event Center, later renamed the 1stBank Center, is still just cleared ground. The city tore the arena down in phases through late 2024 and into 2025, careful to demolish from south to west so the last standing wall would buffer noise for neighbors. The teardown alone cost about $3 million, on top of a building that cost $45 million to build and was financed with $59.8 million in bonds. Broomfield still owes roughly $34.2 million in principal on that debt, and by the time it's paid off the city will have spent close to $135 million on a venue that never hosted anywhere near the 180 to 290 annual events it was built for.

Once the site was cleared, the city put it out to bid for redevelopment in early 2025. Three months later, no developer had submitted a single proposal. Broomfield's own statement to CBS Colorado acknowledged that several builders considered it but backed away over market and investment concerns. Staff are still working on a new strategy, and as of this writing there's no announced timeline for a second attempt.

The businesses that grew up around the arena felt the closure before the demolition even started. The owner of Arista Deli and Coffee, who opened directly across from the venue in 2019 specifically to catch concert and event traffic, told CBS Colorado that weekend foot traffic dropped by roughly half once the arena went dark.

What's filled some of that gap isn't a redevelopment of the arena site itself. It's Arista, the surrounding neighborhood, pulling in its own draws. The Cherry Cricket opened its fourth Colorado location there on Aug. 25, 2025, taking over a former Old Chicago at 1280 E. 1st Avenue with 8,500 square feet and a Burger Garden patio seating more than 325 people, plus about 100 new jobs. A few blocks over, Hickory & Ash has been serving hickory-grilled, Colorado-sourced plates under executive chef Ryan Taylor since Arista Broomfield's buildout, using beef exclusively from Aspen Ridge Ranch. Neither restaurant replaces what a 6,500-seat arena did for weeknight traffic, but they're real, open, and drawing people to the same stretch of road that still has an empty field at its center.

The Downtown Stuck On A Technicality

Of the four projects, Broomfield Town Square is the one residents seem to want most and understand least. The plan is genuinely ambitious: a 12-foot-deep swimmable, fishable lake on a 39-acre site next to City Hall, ringed by waterfront retail and up to 643 apartments, with the long-shuttered Safeway building cut in half and turned into a market hall. The city and the developer, working together as the Broomfield Town Square Alliance, put the price tag near $300 million, backed by a 2019 agreement that includes roughly $20 million in city-owned land and up to $54 million in future tax increment financing through 2044.

The site development plan was approved back in September 2023. That approval started a three-year clock: secure a qualifying building permit within three years or risk losing the plan. That clock runs out on Sept. 12, 2026.

Here's where it gets genuinely contentious. The development team submitted roughly $30 million worth of what they called horizontal infrastructure work this spring, including restrooms and a boathouse, assuming it would satisfy the permit requirement. City staff disagreed, telling the developers those accessory permits don't count as the qualifying permit the deadline actually requires. The developers asked for an 18-month extension, pushing the deadline to March 2028. A council vote on that request was scheduled, then postponed in May 2026 so both sides could keep talking.

By August, the city had made its own move. Broomfield offered the development team $2 million to walk away from the agreement entirely. The city's own public update on the dispute framed the ask around what it called:

"real certainty not only for financing, but for construction, community benefits and responsible stewardship"

If no qualifying permit shows up before Sept. 12, the council can consider revoking the site plan, though that would require a public meeting rather than happening automatically. None of this has dampened resident enthusiasm. A review of the city's 2025 Community Survey found that Town Square was named as a top civic issue by more residents than any other single topic, with excitement running near 87 percent citywide and closer to 95 percent in the ward where the project sits. The same survey found more than 40 percent of respondents specifically frustrated by how slow the project has moved. Both of those things are true about the same project at the same time, which is a fair summary of where Town Square stands right now.

The Two That Are Actually Happening

Set against those two stalled or empty sites, the other pair of projects look almost boring by comparison, in the best sense.

Baseline's Center Street District, on 63 acres at the southeast corner of Sheridan Parkway and Highway 7, got its final plat approved by council in March 2026. Planning documents have shown a corner lot labeled "Whole Foods," and while that hasn't been formally confirmed by the grocer, it's the kind of detail that only shows up because someone is actually tracking permit filings. The broader Baseline community already has more than 1,200 move-in-ready homes on the ground, priced starting in the low $500,000s, a notch below Broomfield's citywide standard-home range of roughly $600,000 to $625,000 in early 2026. Builders Boulder Creek Neighborhoods and Dream Finders Homes are actively selling there now, with David Weekley Homes preparing its own launch.

FlatIron Crossing's HiFi district is even further along. Unlike the other three projects, this one has vertical construction happening on site today, a 25-acre outdoor district being built into the mall's existing footprint by Macerich alongside Crescent Communities' 347-unit Novel FlatIron apartment building. Broomfield's city and county manager, Jennifer Hoffman, described the mall's role to 9News in blunt terms:

"This is and will remain, at least for a decade or two decades, our top economic driver."

The tenant list for 2027 openings at HiFi is already public and specific:

• Pindustry, a 34,000 square foot bowling and entertainment concept with room for up to 1,200 guests
• Blue Sushi Sake Grill, its first location in the north Denver metro area
• Memoir, an American grill billed as a first-to-Colorado concept
• Shake Shack, its first Broomfield location

Inside the existing mall, Abercrombie & Fitch, Levi's, Garage and Starbucks are slated to open in 2026, joining recent arrivals like Anthropologie and the LEGO Store.

What This Actually Tells You

Put the four side by side and a pattern shows up that the city's shared branding hides. The two projects with private capital already committed and construction crews on payroll, Baseline and HiFi, are moving. The two that depend on more complicated public-private structures, Town Square's tax-increment financing and the Transit Village's search for any developer at all, are stuck. That's not a coincidence specific to Broomfield's politics. It's what happens when four projects get grouped under one hopeful label regardless of how differently they're actually financed.

If you live near any of these four sites, the honest answer to "what's happening there" depends entirely on which one you're asking about, and the city's own website won't tell you that part.

If you're weighing what any of this means for a specific block or a specific home in Broomfield, our team at 4S Residential Group tracks these filings as closely as we track comps. Schedule a complimentary home consultation and we'll walk you through what's actually built, what's stalled, and what it might mean for your corner of the city.