I sat in a LULAC meeting in Greeley a couple of weeks back when I first heard the phrase “Community Benefits Agreement.” It was a new one on me, and I thought I had heard all the acronyms. Representatives from Greeley Deserves Better and With Many Hands tossed it out like it was the holy grail: “We need to try and get a robust community benefits agreement.” My gut reaction? This sounds like a new-style grift.
So I did some Googling and poking around, and here’s what I have surmised a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) really is: it’s the civic version of a mob protection racket. “Nice development you got there, shame if somebody labeled it gentrification and tied it up in lawsuits.” A CBA is the payoff – cash, concessions, “equity goals” – to make the protests stop. The activists get to cash in, the politicians get a press release, and the developer gets to break ground. Everybody wins except the ordinary taxpayer, renter, or fan who foots the bill.
So that’s why today’s article in the Denver Gazette threw up red flags and made “Danger, Will Robinson” sound in the back of my head. Broncos owners Greg & Carrie Walton Penner, Gov. Jared Polis, and Mayor Mike Johnston released a joint letter naming Burnham Yard – a historic rail yard south of Colfax, east of I-25 – as the “preferred site” for their shiny new retractable-roof stadium.
Okay, that’s cool.
They promised it would be “privately funded” (no new taxes, they swear), wrapped into a “dynamic mixed-use district” with housing, transit, and shops. They waxed poetic about “reconnecting historic neighborhoods,” while conveniently ignoring that Historic Denver already accused the state of bulldozing heritage sites without community input. Targeted completion: 2031 NFL season.
But here’s the kicker – the line that should set off every alarm bell in your head: “The Broncos are fully committed to a strong and inclusive Community Benefits Agreement process that will begin immediately.”
That’s the code to which I am awakening. Translation: “Shut up about gentrification, we’ve got money earmarked for the usual suspects.”
Why CBAs Are Garbage
The CBA hustle isn’t new. The model took off in Los Angeles in the early 2000s, when community groups held the Staples Center expansion hostage until the developer promised parks, affordable housing, and union jobs. Since then, cities from Brooklyn to Detroit to Baltimore (left-leaning cities, every one) have tried it, and the pattern is always the same: big promises on paper, weak enforcement in reality, higher costs all around. States like Tennessee are already moving to ban them outright.
Here’s the scam in a nutshell: activists threaten delay, demand a CBA, and then siphon benefits to their own organizations or handpicked allies. Developers pass the extra costs on to the public through higher ticket prices, rents, or tax-funded “infrastructure improvements.” Politicians slap “equity” on the press release, and everybody involved gets to look noble while picking your pocket.
Real Benefits vs. Manufactured “Equity”
The cruel irony is that a good project already benefits the community. Stadiums, housing developments, and entertainment districts – they generate work for contractors, jobs for workers, business for local restaurants and shops, and tax revenue for schools and services. That’s real community benefit: opportunity.
But CBAs aren’t about opportunity; they’re about equity – a word that sounds like fairness but really means engineered outcomes. Instead of letting qualified contractors bid, workers compete, and businesses prosper, CBAs insert middlemen who decide who’s “equitable enough” to get the spoils. That’s not equality. That’s gatekeeping. It truly is like old-school “protection” from the mob – “you let us wet our beaks, and we’ll make sure the protestors, lawsuits, and ‘grassroots groups’ sit this one out.” That’s a tax on productivity masquerading as justice.
And Now, Here
So now it’s Colorado’s turn. The Broncos are already laying the groundwork with their Burnham Yard stadium. The “grassroots groups” who have tried to squash Greeley’s Cascadia Project are lining up the same way, with said groups starting to float the term “CBA” into the Northern Colorado breeze. The script doesn’t change: protest, demand a cut, bless the project once the checks clear.
Let’s call it what it is. CBAs aren’t empowerment – they’re indulgences for sale. Developers pay their tithe to the equity priests, and in exchange, they’re absolved of their supposed racist gentrification sins. Everyone gets their slice except the people who actually live there, who just end up paying more.
When billionaires, politicians, and activists all agree on a “strong and inclusive process,” it’s not about you. It’s about how they divvy up the vig. And if you think otherwise, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn – complete with a “community benefits package” – to sell you.
