Your Daily Guide

🏗️ Ball Arena is Getting a $135M Makeover

Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, which owns Ball Arena, as well as the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche and Colorado Mammoth, announced renovation plans on Friday. KSE says the investment is part of its effort to modernize the 27-year-old arena while keeping it at the center of Denver’s sports entertainment scene and eventually at the center of an entirely new neighborhood Kroenke is building in the area surrounding the arena. [9News]

• So what’s changing? The East Atrium is set to expand toward downtown with a new glass façade, escalators and team shop. KSE also plans wider entrances, exits and concourses, faster point of sale technology and three new premium clubs. The expansion plan adds roughly 30,000 square feet. [Denver Post]
• When will we see it? Construction is planned in phases to limit disruptions to fans and surrounding neighborhoods, with full renovations expected to be finished in time for the 2028-29 Nuggets, Avalanche and Mammoth seasons. [NHL.com]
• It’s bigger than the arena: The renovation is intended to become the centerpiece of KSE’s much larger redevelopment of the land surrounding Ball Arena. KSE’s latest announcement specifically mentions a hotel, mid-size entertainment venue, a central park, shopping and dining alongside 8,000 residential units and office towers. Denver planning documents have described the broader project as creating 10-12 million square feet of development. [Denver Post; City of Denver]
• A piece of Denver history: Ball Arena opened as the Pepsi Center in 1999 and has hosted nearly 50 million people across more than 6,000 events, including NCAA tournaments and the 2008 Democratic National Convention. [NHL.com]

🔎 Investigating Alleged Antisemitism at DPS

For the third time in the past five years, the Denver Public Schools Board is hiring an outside investigator to look into allegations made against one of its members. In this case, the investigation will focus on Director Monica Hunter who, amid months of infighting on the board, allegedly referred to a fellow director, Amy Klein Molk, as a “racist Zionist b***h.” [Denver Post 🔒]

• This one is getting messy: The Denver Post’s Jessica Seaman has lots more detail on how all this drama boiled over last week.

🥯 Ready to ‘grip, rip and dip’ your bagels?

There’s never been a better time to be a bagel fan in the Mile High. In addition to several new boutique bakeries serving up gourmet bagels and the old standbys (I will never say no to Einstein Bros.), two new bagel spots are coming soon: The DC-based “Jew-ish” deli chain Call Your Mother announced it will be opening another location Sept. 23 in an old Starbucks on Hampden, while a new-to-Colorado spot called PopUp Bagels will soon open shop in Cherry Creek. [Denver Post 🔒; BusinessDen 🔒]

• A twist: The Connecticut-based PopUp Bagels encourages customers not to slice and spread, but rather tear their bagels into bits and dip them into a wide variety of spreads.

🇺🇲 A Rare Moment of Bipartisanship

All eight of Colorado’s members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of Rep. Gabe Evans’ new data center regulation bill last week. It passed the House by an overwhelming vote of 417-3. Supporters call the bill a “modest first start” in the effort to address Americans’ growing concerns about energy costs. [Colorado Sun]

• How modest? The bill’s new restrictions would only be triggered for data centers large enough to use roughly as much power as the entire cities of Longmont or Loveland (100 MW). However, Evans’ proposed national threshold is much more permissive than what Xcel Energy proposed here in Colorado (50 MW), which is awaiting a final decision from the Public Utilities Commission.
• What’s next? If the Senate follows suit and President Donald Trump signs the bill, it would make new data centers foot the bill for any new infrastructure they’d need.

🥪 Trouble in Congress Park?

The last week brought news of major setbacks for two businesses within blocks of each other in Congress Park: First, Congress Park Market, which opened in late 2023, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. A few blocks west on 12th Avenue, the Briar Patch restaurant announced it would be closing for good, with the owners citing rising costs and slow business. The Briar Patch opened less than a year ago. [BusinessDen 🔒; Westword]