Engage Boulder - Where Did Everybody Go?

Issue #3 — September 18, 2026

Where Did Everybody Go?
Empty offices. Emptying classrooms.

This Engage Boulder Newsletter reflects the personal opinions of Dan Caruso, written with the support of the Caruso Ventures team.

In the last issue I laid out four ways Boulder is falling behind, and worked through two of them. Boulder has stopped growing. Boulder’s revenue is growing slower than inflation.

This issue takes the other two. Boulder’s offices are empty, and Boulder’s classrooms are emptying.

A Quarter of Boulder’s Offices Are Empty

A quarter of Boulder’s office space is empty.

In early 2023 the vacancy rate was 15 percent. By the end of 2025 it had reached 23 percent. In the first quarter of this year it hit 24.8 percent. Boulder has about 6.6 million square feet of offices, which means roughly 1.6 million square feet of it sits dark.

Walk Pearl Street and you’ll see it. Downtown has been near 29 percent since early 2023 and it has barely moved since. If those offices were filled, every business downtown would feel it, and Boulder’s sales tax revenue would be climbing instead of lagging inflation.

The ten points Boulder added since 2023 came from east of downtown. The vacancy is in the labs, in S’Park, and in the buildings along the Diagonal, Pearl Parkway and Arapahoe. These are old buildings and new ones, built to hold a tech workforce or a non-tech one, and far too much of that space is empty.

The buyers saw it before the rest of us did. Boulder commercial property sales ran $1.5 billion across 313 transactions in 2021, and in 2025 they ran $331 million across 177. That is a decline of 78 percent in four years.

Boulder County has 3,700 fewer jobs than it did at its peak.

Two things follow from all that empty space. The people who filled those buildings bought lunch, coffee and groceries in Boulder, and Boulder collected sales tax on all of it. They don’t now.

And a job in an east Boulder office park is what let a family afford a house in Boulder. When the job goes, the family doesn’t commute.

The family moves.

Young Families Are Leaving

The number of kindergarten-age children living in Boulder fell from 962 to 454. That cohort was cut in half.

Children under 18 in Boulder are down 10.5 percent over the decade. Enrollment at schools inside the city of Boulder fell 15.2 percent since 2019, from 14,248 students to 12,083.

The district is closing schools to match. Its proposal closes Douglass, Mesa and Flatirons and relocates High Peaks and Community Montessori. All five are in Boulder. The board votes on September 22.

Though Boulder added more than 2,000 households over the decade, households of four or more people fell by 205.

Boulder should be a community where families grow steadily in number, where children start here in kindergarten and are still here at high school graduation.

If our offices were thriving, those families would be here, and their children would be filling the schools Boulder is about to close.

Boulder is among the most remarkable places in the world. It should be a magnet for families, tech, culture, and commerce. Instead, Boulder has stopped growing. Revenue is growing slower than inflation. A quarter of Boulder’s offices are empty. Young families keep leaving.

Boulder elects a mayor and five City Council members this November — six of the nine seats on council. Five of those running already hold office. As you reflect on each of the issues I raise, ask yourself a question. Should those who have been running our city be re-elected? Or should Boulder voters elect a new slate?

I personally believe we need a fresh start.

— Dan Caruso, Engage Boulder

Author of Engage Colorado | Managing Director of Caruso Ventures | Host of The Bear Roars Podcast | Board Chair of Tulagi