Boulder paid $40 million for an old hospital in 2015. A decade later, the projected cost of turning the site into city offices, housing and flood protection is $366 million with interest. The project, known as Alpine-Balsam, has become a flashpoint in this fall’s election.
Challengers say it reflects poor financial judgment by incumbent city leaders, calling it “Brockett’s Ballroom” and a “cautionary tale.” Mayor Aaron Brockett calls it “a smart decision for the long-term future of the city.”
According to city records, Alpine-Balsam is expected to cost about $258 million, plus another $108 million in projected interest on debt. The $258 million includes the original property purchase, city offices, flood protection, parking, deconstruction and affordable housing.
The debate comes at a consequential moment for Boulder’s finances. City council has placed a $400 million bond measure on the ballot to maintain and replace other aging city buildings. The bond would not fund Alpine-Balsam, but some candidates and campaign groups have cited the project’s rising costs as a reason to oppose it.
Open Boulder, a political group, recently bought a Facebook ad about the project that reads, “Is anyone paying attention? It’s time for a new direction.” Aquiles La Grave, a first-time candidate challenging Brockett, coined the “Brockett’s Ballroom” nickname, a reference to President Trump’s luxury White House ballroom.
“I just look at Alpine-Balsam as a cautionary tale,” council candidate Ryan Jamieson said during a forum on Sept. 2.
City officials, meanwhile, say the project is on track to come in at or below the budgets council approved for its individual phases, even as the overall estimated cost has grown substantially since early planning. They also say consolidating city operations will save money over the long term.
The city plans to move out of at least 10 buildings, shrinking the total square footage it has to maintain and eliminating a combined backlog of about $12 million in deferred maintenance. City officials estimate those buildings cost about $1 million per year to operate and maintain. They also expect to generate tens of millions of dollars by selling some of the properties and a portion of the Alpine-Balsam site for market-rate housing.
“The dollar figures we’re looking at right now are numbers that give people pause,” Brockett told Boulder Reporting Lab. “While the price for this new building is not cheap, it will last for many decades and it will produce … substantial savings for the city over our current situation over the decades to come.”
A review of the project’s history and city records reveals a complicated picture of how Alpine-Balsam grew into one of Boulder’s largest public investments.
The city bought the Boulder Community Hospital campus, near the Ideal Broadway Shops, with plans to potentially consolidate scattered city offices. Since then, the project’s scope and costs have grown substantially, driven by inflation, the pandemic and decisions by successive city councils with different priorities for the site.
Many of those decisions reflected Boulder’s longstanding goals, including sustainability, affordable housing and flood protection. The city’s new offices will reuse part of the old hospital instead of requiring entirely new buildings. Much of the hospital was taken apart to salvage and recycle materials rather than sending them to a landfill. The flood channel doubles as a park with trees, paths and benches. And the site will include the city’s largest affordable housing development to date, with 144 permanently affordable apartments and additional market-rate units. That’s down from 157 affordable units in earlier planning documents, a reduction city officials said was due to design refinements.
But achieving those goals also added costs. A recent cost breakdown released by the city shows where much of the money is going.
The largest expense is the $117 million in construction costs for the renovation of the former hospital’s Medical Office Pavilion. Other major costs include about $19 million for deconstruction, $18 million for flood protection and site infrastructure, and $14.5 million to help build affordable housing. Some infrastructure costs serve both the housing development and city offices.
The city expects to finish the pavilion in late 2027. Construction on the first housing units is expected to begin next year, according to city officials.
Early doubts, expanding ambitions
The city’s first major challenge after buying the property was deciding what to do with the former hospital buildings.
It chose a “sustainable deconstruction” plan that salvaged structural steel, copper and fixtures to keep them out of landfills, while preserving the concrete structures of the Medical Office Pavilion and the Brenton Building for city offices.
As estimated deconstruction costs rose to about $16 million, up from early estimates of about $7 million, several councilmembers began to question whether to proceed. Some suggested the city cut its losses and sell the property.
“As we continue to go down this path, we’re digging a hole that we are not going to get out of,” then-Councilmember Lisa Morzel said at an April 9, 2019, meeting. “It is far more than I think any of us anticipated and I think we call it good and get out and try to sell that property.”
The next month, city staff presented an analysis of the potential long-term savings from consolidating city offices, including moving out of a leased building. Staff said keeping the land would give the city more control over the site’s housing density and affordability. On May 16, 2019, council directed staff to move forward with deconstruction.
That October, council adopted the Alpine-Balsam Area Plan, which envisioned a “neighborhood center” rather than just city offices. The plan called for city offices in the renovated medical pavilion, a flood channel along Balsam Avenue that would double as a greenway connecting North Boulder Park to the site, and permanently affordable and market-rate housing.
Shortly after the city hired a deconstruction contractor, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, according to Michele Crane, the city’s deputy facilities director.
Work began in late 2020 under social distancing rules, forcing the city to reduce the size of the deconstruction crew and slow the work, Crane said. Rising fuel prices also drove up the cost of hauling materials, she said.
Including site maintenance and other expenses, the total deconstruction cost ended up at $19.4 million.
How the pavilion grew more expensive
The largest jump in projected costs came from renovating the Medical Office Pavilion into city offices. In February 2019, the city estimated the renovation, including a fourth floor, at $58 million. Construction is now expected to cost about $117 million. With design, furnishings and other costs, the total has reached about $143 million, though some of the design costs also cover the parking garage and site infrastructure. Crane attributed part of the increase to the pandemic and inflation.
The estimates reflect different stages of planning and do not necessarily include all the same expenses. Still, the increase makes the pavilion a central part of the debate over the project’s cost.
The city also expanded the number of employees it planned to move to the site. Initially, the city sought to move fewer than 300 employees from three or four buildings into the pavilion. After the pandemic, the shift to hybrid work meant multiple employees could share workspaces. That allowed the city to expand its plans, moving about 600 employees from at least 10 buildings into the Western City Campus, which also includes the renovated Brenton Building across the street.
The pavilion itself grew, too. With a fourth floor and other additions, its size nearly doubled, from 62,500 square feet to about 117,000 square feet, according to planning documents.
The parking garage renovation costs about $14 million. Crane said that covers rebuilding a condemned stairwell and repairing corrosion from de-icing salts. It also includes adding electric vehicle charging, as required under Boulder’s Energy Conservation Code.
The city plans to use $14.4 million from its Affordable Housing Fund in 2027 for the housing’s share of the site infrastructure and garage. It has budgeted another $14.5 million to help Boulder Housing Partners build the affordable units, according to city officials.
Some residents argue the project costs far more than comparable developments, such as Google’s 2021 purchase of office space at the Rêve development. Critics have called it the “Taj Mahal.”
Crane said those comparisons miss the public benefits, including flood mitigation for the whole site, the affordable housing and a civic campus intended to last decades.
“It’s not a developer site trying to achieve a bottom line return on investment,” she said. “The city’s investment is in the community.”
Questions about cost transparency
The project has also raised questions about how openly the city tracks and reports the costs of its largest projects.
Earlier this year, organizers with Open Boulder filed a records request for documents related to project costs. The city has since published a detailed summary of current and anticipated expenses. But questions remain about how clearly those costs were presented as the project expanded and successive councils approved its individual phases.
The debate has also prompted calls for greater oversight. Councilmember Tina Marquis, who is running for reelection, has proposed a Facilities and Infrastructure Oversight Committee, made up at least partly of councilmembers, to keep tabs on projects like Alpine-Balsam. Brockett said he also supports the idea.
Crane said the project’s long timeline, which spanned several councils, offers a lesson.
“I’m not sure people knew when we started that this would take 10 years, and it would go through so many councils,” she said. “I think making sure that each council really understands the magnitude and all the pieces … maybe that’s something we can take away for sure.”
She said the city would apply what it has learned to future projects, though she said she does not expect a project of Alpine-Balsam’s scale to crop up anytime soon.
“It’s a huge, unique project. It’s got a lot of costs,” Crane said. “It’s understandable it’s under scrutiny.”
Clarification, October 14, 2026 4:17 pm: This story was updated to include information on a recent change to the number of planned affordable housing units on the site.
As a longtime resident and close neighbor of Alpine Balsam, I hope this project meets its goals and turns out well.
You do have to wonder about the city manager’s role in keeping tabs on costs across multiple council terms and members.
Could BRL do a follow up on this?
Couple of other thoughts in hindsight:
1) The greenway looks
good and people are already using the public spaces. However it seems way too wide. How many affordable homes did
we lose by carving away such a
large portion of the site?
2) You could question the wisdom of moving 600 city employees here at the same time we seek to bring new vitality and public safety to the current civic area. And now we are asking developers to come up with a vision for civic center ‘East Bookend.’ The city needs to do a better
job of developing visions for public buildings that actually improve public spaces and draw users to patronize local business.
This seems like a missed opportunity. With the proposed redevelopment of Boulder Medical Center, Alpine Balsam is urbanizing in an area that (unlike downtown) has limited transit options and connections.
Someone once said the best way to get people out of their cars and walk is to put things close together.
3) Does the $366 million include the costs of consultants and community outreach? I’ve asked the city to provide numbers. They have not.
PS it’s still dark out and I’m on the AB1 with not enough caffeine in my veins. Hope this makes sense.
Alpine-Balsam is exactly why voters should question 2K. A $40 million purchase became a $366 million commitment, including interest. Saying each phase stayed within its approved budget does not answer whether the overall investment made financial sense or whether council understood the full commitment before proceeding.
The article cites Michele Crane’s defense that the project delivers benefits beyond office space, including flood mitigation. There are public benefits, but that explanation needs context. The flood work also makes portions of this flood-constrained site usable for development. A private developer pursuing comparable development would likewise have needed to address those constraints. It is a necessary site-development expense, and presenting it simply as an additional community benefit obscures why it was incurred.
That raises the due diligence question. Before risking tens of millions of dollars, a private developer would investigate floodplain restrictions, demolition, infrastructure, construction costs and financing, then compare alternatives. If these expenses became unavoidable once the city bought the property, the underlying constraints should have been investigated beforehand and that is an oversight failure council and staff need to own.
Now 2K asks taxpayers to authorize another $400 million in borrowing, with repayment of up to $650 million. The largest proposed item is a $170 million Public Safety Center and 911 dispatch hub, more than 40% of the bond.
The city’s original plan put that building on its former wastewater treatment site, with an estimated $20 million to $40 million for site infrastructure, including relocating pipes and addressing floodplain issues. Sound familiar? Another complicated city-owned site requiring tens of millions to accommodate its intended use.
Then, on Sept. 24, the city manager announced an opportunity to lease or buy an existing building that would “significantly reduce” the cost. That is precisely the kind of alternative the city should examine. But it should complete that analysis and establish what we actually need to spend before asking voters to authorize borrowing of this magnitude.
The bond’s project list is not binding. Its language allows spending on “other capital projects, such as” those listed. Approving expenditures in stages is no substitute for approving each project’s full budget up front, with regular public reporting against it.
We risk repeating Alpine Balsam style mismanagement by approving a blank-check bond, before having enforceable controls: clearly defined projects, complete cost estimates, independent review of alternatives, value engineering, full accounting for financing and interest, and regular reporting against approved budgets. Council and staff must also take responsibility for Alpine-Balsam’s excessive spending and squandering of taxpayer resources, rather than defending each phase while avoiding responsibility for the overall result.
We should also be clear about how we know Alpine-Balsam’s full cost. Without the work of private citizens, the city might never have provided a complete accounting of the project’s financial commitment. That is unacceptable. Taxpayers should not have to rely on outside advocates to assemble the facts needed to understand how public money is spent.
We need to learn from Alpine-Balsam, hold the city accountable and require meaningful safeguards before authorizing hundreds of millions of dollars in new borrowing.
Agree 100%
I’d be curious to see more comparisons (at greater detail) to other large developments like google’s office space, maybe even the new arapahoe hospital, and school remodels. This article says costs went up but doesnt compare those costs to the market in any meaningful way.
The largest eyebrow riser is the cost of debt. In an ideal world the cost of debt would be minimal as community institutions should provide cheap debt to support community projects – especially to offset their convoluted and often longer timelines.
Agree. i wish the reporting team would ask the city why interest is so high, and which properties they plan to sell for how much, and where is the proof that the city is below budget for the individual phases? It feels like ‘let’s take the city’s word at face value and not question it.’
To be clear, our “reporting team” does not take the city’s word at face value. You also have no way of knowing what questions we’ve asked city officials or what information we’ve requested in the course of our reporting. We welcome questions and constructive criticism, but suggesting that our reporters simply accept the city’s claims without challenging them is unfair and inaccurate.
“The city plans to move out of at least 10 buildings” – what are the locations and current uses for those 10 buildings? Are those buildings listed for sale yet? The city cannot afford to have both.
Was the option of looking for a site to build consolidated city offices in the eastern part of Boulder considered upfront? This option may have been less expensive overall. Further, if it’s true that the preponderance of city employees commute in from nearby communities, this location may have been more accessible for those employees. Another advantage might have been reduction of traffic and pollution in north Boulder. In any event, the failure of our current city administrative leadership to assertively provide responsible financial stewardship to our community demands scrutiny and corrective action.
I appreciate that BRL picked up this story, but there are several other issues that need to be investigated to fully appreciate the scale of this mismanagement of public funds.
OPPORTUNITY COST: For $366M, the city will get 144 units of affordable housing and 138,500 sf of office space. What should that have cost?
Housing – the city’s own benchmark for affordable housing is $120,000 per unit. 144 units = $17M
Office Space – Class A office rates have cratered since Covid. Google paid $782/sf in 2021, Boulder County paid $355/sf in 2024 and, until recently, there was 163,000 sf of new class A space sitting vacant at the 29th St Mall. Even using a generous $750/sf estimate, 138,500 sf = $104M.
Total Market Cost: ~$121M. Total Actual Cost: $258M (excluding COP interest). Premium Paid: $137M – more than 100% over market rate. Imagine if we had that extra $137M? We wouldn’t even need the full $400M bond and we most certainly could have addressed the rec center issues with that savings.
WCC ROI ANALYSIS: The city claims that the consolidation of 10 city buildings into the WCC will save $12M in deferred maintenance costs and $1M/yr in operating costs. They also claim, without any details, that they will be selling properties for “tens of millions of dollars” to offset some of these costs. Putting aside the fact that the WCC will also have substantial annual operating costs, their ROI analysis for the WCC just doesn’t pencil out. Spend $150M today (excluding interest) to save – at best – $50M over the next few decades?
The other item that gets glossed over here is the “lease vs buy” analysis that should have been done post-Covid. With all of the commercial vacancies downtown, and the need to keep workers down there, there is no doubt a cheaper alternative could have been found. In fact, in the city’s own 2019 analysis presented to city council, it determined it would take 39 years for the WCC build to breakeven (vs. leasing). And that was at 2019 lease rates and a lower WCC cost assumption. Imagine what that analysis looks like today?
DEBT SERVICE IMPACTS: The city will pay $9M/year from the general fund to repay this debt. In October 2025, with that $9M a year already flowing out, the city passed a new $6M/yr Transportation Maintenance Fee because general fund revenue could no longer keep pace with basic transportation infrastructure needs. The city has never publicly drawn this connection, but the math does it for them: taxpayers are now paying new fees for basic services, whild $9M per year in general fund revenue gets diverted to Alpine-Balsam debt service.
The train has already left the station on Alpine-Balsam. The best the public can hope for at this point is that the city takes seriously the lessons learned by this egregious squandering of taxpayer dollars by ensuring any future capital spending has the appropriate process and guardrails in place. Their $400M bond measure doesn’t instill a whole lot of confidence that these lessons have been learned.
Thanks for reading. As our reporting shows, Alpine-Balsam is a complicated project that has evolved over many years under successive city councils. Our goal is to cut through the rhetoric and help readers understand what the city is actually spending, what it’s getting in return and what questions remain.
One important clarification: The city is not spending $366 million to build 144 affordable housing units and office space. That figure represents the projected cost of the much broader redevelopment, including the original property purchase, city offices, flood protection, demolition, parking, infrastructure improvements and contributions toward what will be the city’s largest affordable housing development to date. It also includes projected interest payments on debt over several decades.
The affordable housing is being developed by Boulder Housing Partners, with separate financing and city contributions toward construction and shared infrastructure. The site will also include market-rate housing.
For $366M, the city will ultimately get 138,500 sf of office space, a parking garage and 144 units of affordable housing. As on offset, they hope to get around $10M off the sale of market rate parcels on the site. That is the all-in economic picture.
Any developer that purchased that site would have had to incur the same demo and flood work costs to prep the site – which is likely why no one wanted to buy the property to begin with.
Boulder Housing Partners will use the city’s subsidy (included in the $366M figure) to develop the affordable housing. Typically that subsidy is $120K/unit. In this case, more like $400K/unit all-in.
This detailed analysis highlights the dysfunction in our city government. There is no mechanism or process to hold either council or staff accountable for anything. As you say, what we do know is the result of public advocacy and reporting, not elected officials and staff caring enough to look at the big picture over time and act accordingly.
Council mindsets need to change. We can’t continue electing council members who are so intent on partnering with staff and cheering their every move that it becomes their main goal. And just relying on staff to tell them everything they know is definitely not cutting it.
I won’t vote for any candidate that supports this monstrosity.