The brothers, whose wealth came from their father selling the family cattle company in 1987, don’t have much to show over the years, with just nine winning seasons recorded over their 32 years in Major League Baseball. Those nine winning seasons have translated into just five playoff appearances and one trip to the World Series in 2007, when the team was swept by the Boston Red Sox.
The last few years have been particularly bleak. The Rockies lost 204 games across 2023 and 2024. Even so, 2025 is somehow the worst season yet, with the team holding the fewest victories through seventy games since the worst team in professional baseball history: the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.
The Rockies are now 17-57, on pace for around 45 wins out of the 162-game MLB season. A growing number of fans have called for the Monforts to sell their 64 percent controlling interest of the team to more adept and competitive owners Sports columnists and fans on social media have even called for a boycott of the Rockies, arguing that to get the Monforts to sell, owning the team must become unprofitable.
“Purge the purple nightmare,” local comedian Adam Cayton-Holland wrote in his Substack newsletter earlier this month. “Stop going to Rockies games. Force a sell. If you’re a baseball fan and you give the Colorado Rockies money, you are stupid. I was once stupid. But I’m not anymore. Well, in a lot of other ways I’m actually quite stupid still. I leave the burner on my stove on, like, a concerning amount. But I’m not stupid about the Rockies. Not anymore.”
According to ESPN, Coors Field is still averaging over 28,500 perhaps-stupid fans per night, good for seventeenth in the 30-team league. But those attendance numbers (and a sweet MLB revenue sharing plan) are just part of the money-making machine for the Monfort family, whose members have plenty of other investments in downtown Denver.
Although they don't have much to show on the field, the family behind the Rockies has a lot of footprints around town, especially near the ballpark.
McGregor Square Relies on Rockies' Coors Field Lease
Taxpayers, not the Monforts, paid for and own Coors Field. The $250 million construction costs for the stadium were funded by a one-tenth of 1 percent tax approved by taxpayers in 1990 — a tax that Denver voters rejected but ultimately received enough approval in surrounding counties. Now, the Denver Metropolitan Major League Baseball Stadium District owns the stadium while the owners maintain Coors Field and invest in improvements there.Molson Coors does not pay annually to hold the naming rights for Coors Field but rather struck a deal in the early 1990s to own the naming rights in perpetuity after a one-time payment of $30 million.
When the Rockies re-negotiated their lease in 2017, the team almost had to play at a local high school to begin the season as the franchise attempted to buy the “West Lot,” a parking lot south of the stadium that is now McGregor Square. The lot is owned by the stadium district, which did not want to sell the property; reportedly, the team wanted to develop the lot to help create another revenue stream to fund the maintenance of Coors Field.
In a last-minute deal in 2017, the Rockies and the stadium district agreed on a thirty-year lease in which the team pays $75 million to rent Coors Field (broken down into $2.5 million per year, $1.5 million of which goes directly into a stadium improvement fund) and $125 million to lease the West Lot for 99 years.
For the first five years of the West Lot agreement, which have already passed, the team paid $7.5 million annually. For the next fifteen, the Rockies will pay $5 million to the district each year. After that, the team will pay $1.25 million for ten years, and only $100 from the years 2048 to 2102.
Dick Monfort ran with the lease, constructing what is now known as McGregor Square with bars, retail space, condos and the Rally Hotel. Construction on McGregor Square began in 2018, which is also the last time the Rockies made the playoffs. A study by the University of Maryland in 2021 determined that building McGregor Square cost $365 million.
McGregor Square celebrated its grand opening in 2021. Since then, watch parties for the playoffs for every major sports team in Denver have occurred in the square — every team but the one that paid for the space, that is.
But at least Dick has a new home right next to the ballpark; according to his bio on the Rockies website, he lives at the McGregor Square Residences, which are estimated to net over $131 million, according to the 2021 study, which also projected the hotel, retail and office spaces to bring a combined $24 million annually.
Next Monfort Generation Transforming Downtown Denver
Charlie’s children, particularly his son Kenneth, are expanding the Monfort profile in downtown Denver, owning much of the 1900 block of Market Street right next to Coors Field. Kenneth founded Monfort Companies, which is unaffiliated with the Rockies, in 2011 as a “next-generation company committed to adding long-term economic value and vitality to communities throughout Colorado,” according to the company website. Kenneth himself doesn’t play any part in the Rockies, although the family’s money and legacy likely helped him jumpstart the company.
In 2019, Monfort Companies bought what was then LoDo’s Bar at 1946 Market Street and transformed the space into Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row. Montfort sold the land in 2022 for $24 million but still owns the business with Riot Hospitality as a partner.
Later in 2022, Montfort Companies and Riot started building Riot House right next to Dierks at 1930 Market Street, expanding Riot House from its original location in Scottsdale, Arizona. The club opened on New Year's Eve in 2023.
Kenneth and his team purchased the legendary El Chapultepec jazz club at 1962 Market Street in 2022 for $5.38 million; the Giggling Grizzly next door was also part of the purchase.
El Chapultepec, a beloved dive and jazz bar across the street from Coors Field, saw plenty of Denver history since opening in 1933, but was rented out in 2021 to controversial downtown bar owner Valentes Corleons, who illegally began construction inside the club, painting a mural of himself on one wall and tearing out the historic stage and booths.
When the Monfort team took over, the group originally proposed tearing El Chapultepec down, much to the horror of local history buffs. Historic Denver, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving Denver’s history, worked with the Monforts on a compromise to preserve several walls along with the iconic lopped-off-triangle shape of El Chapultepec while adding a glass structure on Market and expanding into the Giggling Grizzly space. After some shifting of those plans, they've been approved and the Giggling Grizzly is slated to close next month.
Though Monfort Companies is most well-known for that downtown stretch, the company has also invested heavily in Cherry Creek. According to its website, Monfort Companies is an investor in the Halcyon Hotel and the Clayton members club in Cherry Creek, as well as the office building at 205 Detroit Street.
Monfort Companies is also a part-owner of the Edit at River North, a high-rise apartment building in RiNo, and 1525 Raleigh Street, an office and retail building in Sloan’s Lake, next to the Alamo Drafthouse.
According to the Denver Tax Assessor, the company also owns 25 West Third Avenue, a small office space behind the 7-Eleven on Broadway and Third Avenue. Montfort Companies actually has an entire division dedicated to owning 7-Elevens and other convenience stores called 7E CO Holdings, which has existed since 2016.
According to CSP Daily News, a publication dedicated to news about the convenience store industry, Montfort Companies owned 79 gas stations and convenience stores as of 2024, including in Colorado, Wyoming and Kansas. 7-Eleven isn’t the only convenience store brand in the portfolio, either, with Chisholm Corner, Jack's, Monfort Express and Speedway locations all part of the umbrella.
Montfort Companies also owns properties in Greeley, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins and Wichita, Kansas, as well as apartment buildings in Longmont, Lakewood and Commerce City.
