Denver Pro Women's Soccer Team Announces Plans for New Stadium at Gates Site

Denver’s professional women’s soccer team will build a stadium at South Broadway and Interstate 25 on the former Gates Rubber site, which has sat dormant for decades.

The National Women’s Soccer League announced in January that Denver would be the latest city to receive an NWSL franchise as the league expands. The team committed to privately funding a stadium, with the owners adding that the group would want space for a mixed-use development around the stadium itself.

Santa Fe Yards provides an opportunity for just that, with fourteen acres of land for the NWSL team to revitalize.

“We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leverage this massive private investment to revitalize and transform Santa Fe Yards into a new hub of thriving community activity,” controlling owner Rob Cohen said in an announcement.

At the center of the development will be the stadium, which the team announced will seat 14,500 people, though the stadium design will include the ability to expand the venue for larger crowds.

Populous, a global design firm specializing in arenas and stadiums, will lead the stadium design. Populous is behind the Sphere in Las Vegas and has built several Olympic venues.

Alongside the stadium will be a “sports and entertainment district," according to the team announcement. The district will include a 3.5-acre park and other mixed-use development with restaurants and retail spaces. It will also be transit-friendly and walkable.

“This project will reconnect neighborhoods, create new jobs, and boost the local economy during and after the construction process, unlocking year-round economic, social, and cultural benefits that extend far beyond the stadium’s walls,” Cohen added.

At a March 18 press conference, Cohen said the team looked at many potential sites for the stadium but that Santa Fe Yards stood out because it is near the urban core of Denver, has existing public transit options and is in a neighborhood that will provide a great game-day environment. Additionally, the site has enough space that the team can activate the area year-round.

"It allows us to do other things, like have high school graduations or high school sporting events, farmers' markets, art festivals," Cohen said. "You could have road races that start and end in the park, and if you imagine a screen at the south end of the end zone that looks both ways, you could have movie night in the park for families. ...You can let your imagination go on and on about the activation."

Though parts of the former Gates Rubber campus in the Santa Fe Yards area have been redeveloped, the large plot of land where the stadium will go has sat dormant for decades.

In the 1900s, Gates Rubber was the largest employer in Denver, producing car parts like tires, gaskets and batteries. Charles Gates, the company’s founder, innovated in the auto parts industry by replacing parts once made of leather with rubber, all made in Denver.

The company was a pioneer of synthetic rubber and continued booming through the 1980s. But in that decade, Gates moved most manufacturing jobs to plants in other places. Finally, in 1996, the Gates family sold its interest in the company to a British conglomerate, Tomkins PLC, which moved its administrative headquarters downtown and closed the plant on Broadway completely.

The main factory and surrounding buildings have been the focus of several ideas for development that never came to fruition. Cherokee Denver wanted to build an “urban village” on the site, including 3,000 residential units, and purchased the land in 2001. But during the financial crisis in 2008, the company lost funding.

Gates took the site back but continued the environmental cleanup in the area around the factory, which was needed before any construction could be done because of chemical contamination in the soil from the rubber manufacturing days. An investor has yet to successfully redevelop the land — until now.

"I remember growing up in District 7, where I now live, and looking up at this enormous factory, and it felt like a wall that separated haves and have not," Denver City Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez said at the press conference. "For decades, this site has symbolized the loss of opportunity and a space where generations once worked to build their future but later became a vacant reminder of an economic shift and social and economic and environmental injustice. Today, we're reclaiming that history."

Though the owners are financing the stadium themselves, the city will help the team out by allowing tax-increment funding in the area, which dates back to the Cherokee development, according to the Denver Urban Renewal Authority.

At the press conference, Mayor Mike Johnston said the tax-increment funding for the site was part of why the city thought it would be an ideal place for the soccer stadium.

With tax-increment funding, as the property value grows, the difference between the land’s current value and the growth will be used to fund improvements and redevelopment in the area. Basically, what the team would pay in increasing taxes will instead be given back to the team for investment in the area. Under the agreement for the previous development, both property and sales tax would be part of the tax-increment funding. Such agreements can last up to 25 years; the agreement was last renewed in 2017.

The stadium is expected to be ready by 2028, with the team playing its inaugural season in Denver in 2026. Cohen said the total price of the development isn't known yet, as there are still details to work out.

Along with Cohen, the other top owner of the team is Project Level, led by Mellody Hobson — an entrepreneur who also owns a minority stake in the Denver Broncos — and former Washington Commanders president Jason Wright. Jon-Erik Borgen and Kaia Borgen Moritz, who own FirstTracks Sports Ventures, as well as Neelima Joshi, Dhiren Jhaveri and Molly Coors are all minority owners.

A team name and temporary venue for play while the stadium is built will be announced by the club at a later date.