Ball Arena opened in 1999. It houses three professional teams, the NHL Avalanche, the NBA Nuggets and the NLL Mammoth, and it is now at the age where an arena either gets reinvested in or gets replaced.
Kroenke Sports & Entertainment announced on Sept. 18 that it will spend an estimated $135 million keeping it. Chairman Stan Kroenke framed the work as setting the building up for “another 25 years and beyond.”
Where the money goes
Three new premium clubs, which is where arena renovation economics almost always start. A 30,000-square-foot addition to the east lobby, carrying a team store roughly double the current retail footprint. And a 34,000-square-foot pedestrian plaza fronting Chopper Circle, which is the piece that changes how the building meets the street rather than how it makes money on game night.
Construction starts in summer 2027 and finishes in fall 2028, per Denver Post reporting. The dollar figure, the scope and the Kroenke quote come from the owner and the Avalanche’s own statement. No architect, general contractor or engineer has been named, which for a $135 million arena job announced 21 months before it starts is normal but worth tracking.
The parking lots are the bigger story
KSE has separately filed to redevelop the surface lots around the arena with an entertainment venue, a hotel, two multifamily buildings, a central park, retail, dining and office towers. That’s a district-scale scheme, and the arena renovation reads differently next to it: you don’t spend $135 million on premium clubs and a front plaza unless the building is going to be the anchor of something.
The plaza in particular only makes sense if there’s somewhere to walk to. Right now there’s asphalt.
Repositioning beats replacing, on the numbers
Arena replacement in a downtown core now runs past $2 billion. Against that, $135 million to buy 25 more years out of a structurally sound 1999 building is straightforward arithmetic, and the same calculation is showing up in commercial work everywhere.
Brussels kept the cores and six basement levels of two 1970s towers and rebuilt everything else as ZIN in No(o)rd, which took CTBUH Best Tall Building Worldwide last October. Singapore gazetted the 1973 Golden Mile Complex rather than let it be demolished, trading conservation for development rights. London’s British Museum Western Range is rebuilding ten accreted buildings behind a Grade I listed facade while staying open.
Different countries, same conclusion: the frame is usually the part still worth having.