Engage Boulder — The City of Boulder's Alpine-Balsam Albatross

Issue #4 — September 21, 2026

The City of Boulder’s Alpine-Balsam Albatross

Now Boulder’s residents are saddled with a $400 million price tag.

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

An Expensive New Headquarters and a $400 Million Ballot Measure

Boulder is asking voters for $400 million this November — up to $650 million once interest is included. Juxtaposed against this vote is the City’s under-construction new headquarters at the intersection of Alpine and Balsam, expected to open in spring 2027. The all-in cost of this new headquarters is estimated to be well north of $350 million. Perhaps if the City of Boulder handled Alpine-Balsam and similar matters differently, the $400 million would be unnecessary.

Boulder’s Housing Crisis, Revisited

Boulder has a housing affordability crisis. The median home in North Boulder now sells for $1.2 million. The City continues to make it expensive and difficult for new market-based housing to be built.

The city’s non-student population has shrunk for a decade. The number of kindergarten-age children living in Boulder was cut in half. Families keep leaving, and housing and vacated commercial buildings are the reasons why.

Which makes the Alpine-Balsam parcel worth a second look. What if, instead of a government headquarters, a neighborhood had been built? Gone would be the parking garage and the office building. Instead: 8.8 acres on the west side of Broadway, wrapped by residential streets on two sides. North Boulder Park runs directly along its western edge — a park with south-facing views of the Flatirons, in the historic Newlands neighborhood, a few blocks from downtown. It’s flat, already cleared, already served by transit and utilities. If any parcel in Boulder was the natural site for new housing, this was it.

250 to 350+ Households, Not a Taxpayer-Funded Office Park

The Alpine-Balsam site could have supported 250 to 350+ households. The City’s RMX-2 district allows 10 homes per acre by right, up to 20 per acre with site review. Broadway itself is exactly the kind of transit corridor Boulder has been pushing more density onto, and recent changes to the City’s Residential High zones replaced hard per-acre caps with floor-area limits that support even more. Alpine-Balsam could have been designed as a real mixed-use neighborhood — homes above ground-floor shops along Broadway, townhomes toward the park and the residential streets behind it — plus room for the small businesses a walkable neighborhood needs.

Many of these homes would have housed families with children. Those households would have paid property taxes into the City budget. Their kids would have filled classroom seats in a district now voting to close schools for lack of enrollment. And they would have shopped, eaten, and spent along Broadway and on Pearl Street, in a city where a quarter of the office space already sits empty. Perhaps some of these residents would have influenced their companies to headquarter in Boulder instead of elsewhere.

No Bidders. No Vote.

So why wasn’t it used for residential? Why wasn’t this land developed as a neighborhood?

Here’s what the record shows. The City of Boulder bought the site directly from Boulder Community Health for $40 million in 2015. I could find no evidence of a competitive sale process — no other bidders, no open listing, nothing suggesting the private market ever got a chance at it. The City’s own language at the time says why: officials called the purchase “a rare opportunity to help ensure that future redevelopment of the site fits the community’s vision and goals.” In plain terms, the City used its position to take control of the property outright — without ever giving the private sector, and the developers who might have built the housing described above, a chance to bid on it.

The City didn’t even need to ask its own voters. It financed the $40.8 million purchase through Certificates of Participation — a lease-financing tool that, under Colorado’s TABOR rules, doesn’t require voter approval the way a bond does. No competing bidders on one side. No vote on the other. Just millions in debt to someday be repaid.

Time for a Fresh Start?

That’s the same City now asking Boulder for $400 million more this November. Alpine-Balsam is the clearest example of a pattern: given a choice, the City built for itself — not for the families priced out of Boulder, and not for the kind of business climate that would fill Boulder’s empty office parks instead of leaving them vacant. Now it’s asking residents to trust it with $400 million more — to attend to its sprawling real estate portfolio.

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 think about what this land could have been, 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.

Sources

— Dan Caruso, Engage Boulder

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