Earlier this year, a request for qualifications process yielded two qualified development teams:
- Triangle Collective comprised of Macquarie Financial Holdings (Infrastructure Equity Member), with Hensel Phelps Construction (Lead Contractor), OVG Facilities and Live Nation Worldwide (Lead Facilities Operators), Fentress Architects and Perkins+Will (Lead Architects), MIG (Lead Urban Designer and Lead Engineer, horizontal), Thornton Tomasetti (Lead Engineer, structural), Hoehn Architects (Historic Rehabilitation Consultant)
- Triangle Partners comprised of Plenary Group USA Concessions and Saunders Concessions (Infrastructure Equity Members), with Saunders Construction and J.E. Dunn Construction Company (Lead Contractors), AEG Facilities (Lead Facilities Operator), Populous (Lead Architect), HKS (Lead Urban Designer), Martin/Martin (Lead Engineer), David Owen Tryba Architects (Historic Rehabilitation Consultant)
The project involves developing the southeast side of the National Western Center (NWC) campus. The Triangle refers to a triangle-shaped, 60-acre area on the southeast side of the National Western Center campus.
The city is looking for a development partner to design, build, finance, operate and maintain public facilities, including:
- restoration of the 1909 Stadium Arena;
- construction of an exposition hall; and
- construction of a new, mid-size arena for the National Western Stock Show rodeos, concerts and other year-round entertainment events.
“We are excited to launch this unique procurement process which will provide unprecedented transparency and opportunity for community input into a final request for proposals that is responsive to community needs,” deputy chief projects officer and executive director of the PBI Office, Chris Pacheco said. “With this step, we continue to deliver on our commitment to a neutral, transparent process for evaluating and delivering Performance Based Infrastructure projects.”
The project will also include environmental clean-up of parts of the site and construction of infrastructure to support and connect the campus to surrounding neighborhoods.
The project requires that atleast 20 per cent of any residential development included be affordable housing with a variety of unit sizes both for sale and for rent, available to a mix of income levels.
The draft RFP for the Triangle project will go through four rounds of drafts before it is reissued as the final RFP in summer of 2020. Beginning in January 2020, the city will use a variety of meetings and input sessions, both existing and new, to outreach to, communicate with and gather feedback from the community and City Council as it works to craft and release a Final RFP.
In 2014 and 2015, the NWC Master Plan and relevant neighborhood plans were approved by Denver City Council and Ballot Measure 2C was overwhelmingly approved by Denver voters, funding the construction of Phases 1 & 2, the northwest portion of the campus.
Since then, much of the foundational work for Phases 1 & 2 of the project has begun, but the Triangle Project, as outlined in the draft RFP, provides a means to deliver, finance and operate the elements of the campus not covered by the 2C funding.
Once complete, the National Western Center campus is expected to draw over 2.2 million new visitors annually.