The Boulder County hearing room erupted in applause on Nov. 18 as commissioners voted 2-1 to sell the North Broadway Complex, including Iris Fields, to the community-backed bidder that pledged to preserve the longtime baseball diamonds.
The Academy, a luxury senior living developer, will pay $26 million for the site and intends to convey the fields to the City of Boulder in exchange for cash or land-use compensation. The decision marks a major victory for North Boulder Little League and members of the Save Iris Fields coalition, who spent months organizing to ensure the fields remained intact.
Their partnership with The Academy began with an unsolicited proposal submitted in August, which prompted the county to open a formal bidding window. Commissioners say public response was overwhelming: a near-unanimous flood of emails supporting The Academy’s plan. Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann said she received over 100 emails in a 30-minute period in early November.
But until last week, the outcome remained uncertain. A Nov. 11 Boulder Reporting Lab story revealed that a competing developer had offered $48 million for the property, nearly double The Academy’s bid. The reporting triggered a surge of new emails and helped clarify how closely the community was watching.
Within 24 hours, county staff updated the website to indicate the commissioners were likely to move forward with The Academy at their Nov. 18 meeting. Two days later, in response to what appeared to be pushback from rival bidders, the county softened the language, saying staff would present an “update on completed negotiations” rather than a recommendation, a clarification meant to show staff had not taken a position.
At the Nov. 18 meeting, Commissioners Claire Levy and Stolzmann voted in favor of the sale. Commissioner Marta Loachamin voted no, saying she wished the property would be used for affordable housing.
“For me, the primary vision could have been, and in my opinion, should have been, the opportunity to look at this parcel for the county, whether it was employee housing or workforce housing, or some type of attainable housing,” she said.
The Academy plans to build about 100 senior-living units on the western portion of the parcel, where county buildings currently stand. Its proposal “conceptually includes” 10 affordable housing units for senior-living employees and would generate an estimated $13 million in cash-in-lieu for the City of Boulder’s Affordable Housing program, a contribution Loachamin said is a poor replacement for actual housing.
“We have a housing crisis, inventory crisis everywhere around the State of Colorado,” she said. “Putting money off to the side just doesn’t meet the actual opportunity immediately.”
Levy said she had some concerns about The Academy’s previous developments being “really quite expensive and only available to very wealthy people.” But she said her priority in this case was safeguarding the ballfields, a fixture of her North Boulder neighborhood.
“As an almost 40-year resident of the City of Boulder … I would have a hard time living with a decision that just let the whole property be redeveloped.”
Another proposal would have preserved the fields and built affordable housing, but The Academy outbid it by $11 million and drew far stronger community support.
Stolzmann praised the grassroots effort that rallied behind The Academy’s bid, calling it the highest bid that didn’t hinge on city zoning approvals, “which we all know can take years and years.”
The vote brought visible relief to dozens of North Boulder Little League families gathered in the hearing room, many wearing the league’s green hats.
“It brought tears to my eyes,” said Marlyn Bohn, the first woman to serve as a little league president west of the Mississippi River and the namesake of the Southeast Iris field. “I am so happy they picked kids over money.”
Bohn sat in the front row wearing a hat covered in pins collected over 41 years with the North Boulder Little League. As a girl, she was not allowed to play baseball, and as president she made sure girls were welcome in the league.
She recalled attending her first Little League board meeting in the 1970s, where a man joked that “all your little girls are going to get rid of their patent leather shoes.” When North Boulder played his league three years later, Bohn remembered the comment.
“I said to a coach, will you do me a favor and have Jane pitch at least one inning,” she said. “Jane pitched six innings and won the ball game. Case closed.”
Current league leaders echoed her sentiment about Iris Fields.
“It just feels like the culmination of a lot of effort and a lot of people’s angst,” said Thomas Click, the league’s vice president. “So to see it finally go all the way through — we’re overjoyed.”
“Hopefully it’s a blueprint going forward for a better way to handle things like this. There was zero opportunity for community engagement in this whole process,” he went on. “So we just made a groundswell that was too big to ignore. But ideally, I think there’s an opportunity for the county to interact directly with the community, as opposed to just developers on the front end.”
Great reporting on this throughout, glad BRL was there, thank you Brooke.
The Academy organization is the group that “promised” to build a senior housing development on the lot east King Soopers on 30th Street when they developed that huge Mapleton Retirement Housing for very wealthy people. After the city somehow failed to make it a legal part of the approval process for Mapleton, the Academy group reneged on that commitment . I would advise the county to legally lock-in any promises these people make.
Previous information on this initiative referred to the Academy building MIDDLE-INCOME senior housing at the site–while I am happy the baseball fields will be preserved, I wrote letters in support of this project based on the intent to provide housing for seniors of moderate means who wish to remain in central Boulder but can’t afford the recent luxury developments nor qualify for Section 8 housing. I hope this stated intent is not lost along the way.
How do I put this nicely… but thank god the community rallied together on this one. I can’t believe humans want to pave paradise and put up a parking lot (or in the other developers case – a sh*t ton of apartments they would make millions off in tax relief/revenue/etc). These baseballs fields are used EVERY DAY, I live down the road and love driving by seeing dads throwing pitches to their daughters and sons. It’s community at its finest. Senior living community being built next door is great! Now they should build a little stands with ADA accessible ramps in the outfield for the new senior aged fans who will be moving in! Great job on this one Boulder! I woulda have been bummed and honestly pissed every time driving by the construction if they took down these fields. Now…. Play ball!
There’s something poetically ironic about thinking that a developer of Luxury Senior Living Communities for the wealthiest of Americans is somehow going to save some little league fields in a city where there’s fewer and fewer young families every year due to them being priced out.
I hate to be so cynical but I will be shocked if those fields are still there in 10 years. Almost certainly they will be torn down for more luxury Senior condos.