Douglas County’s Zebulon sports megacomplex faces concerns

The plans for the Zebulon Regional Sports Complex are huge.

On the drawing board are four baseball fields, three ice rinks and a pair of soccer fields. Eight to 10 basketball courts — which can be converted into 20 volleyball courts or 30 pickleball courts — are also in the mix. Add in a 400,000-square-foot, domed indoor sports facility that will house more fields for year-round play, and you get a sense of Zebulon’s scale once it’s built in northern Douglas County.

And that’s just the first phase, which could break ground as soon as this fall on a 50-acre parcel just southeast of the master-planned Sterling Ranch community. Later phases could bring as many as eight additional sports fields, along with restaurants, shops and a hotel — in what Douglas County Commissioner Abe Laydon calls a potential “economic development corridor.”

“We want something that is iconic,” Laydon told The Denver Post.

But the sheer size of the project — and the paucity of financial details surrounding it — have some residents in this politically conservative county asking questions. Among the concerns about the project, which is planned to the southeast of Chatfield Reservoir, is how much the county might end up shelling out and how much private partners will benefit.

“We don’t know how much this is going to cost and who’s going to pay for it,” said Sudee Floyd, who lives in the house her father built more than 50 years ago in the nearby Plum Valley Heights neighborhood.

Floyd, 64, has worries about contamination from an old dynamite-making plant that operated for decades at the proposed Zebulon site. She also wonders whether Douglas County taxpayers might be left holding the bag should things go south.

County leaders plan to tap its Parks, Trails, Historic Resources and Open Space Fund to help cover some of the early costs of the Zebulon project. Launched in 1994 with a 0.17% sales and use tax, the fund was re-upped by voters in 2022. Over the next 15 years, it is projected to bring in around $330 million.

Douglas County has already pledged just over $800,000 to do engineering and infrastructure studies for Zebulon. A final development partner has not been chosen but Luke Taylor, a managing member of KT Development, was one of the speakers at a county-hosted town hall in April regarding the project.

KT developed the Blue Sport Stable, a 186,000-square-foot sports megacomplex in Superior. Taylor hopes his firm lands the contract to build Zebulon but bidding is still underway. He declined to comment further.

Floyd said the speed at which the county is moving on the project, which was announced just four months ago, reminds her of the commissioners’ recent effort to bring home rule to the county — an initiative that was heavily criticized for being opaque and rushed.

Voters overwhelmingly rejected the home rule effort at the ballot box in June.

“This is moving way too fast. No one is showing their cards,” Floyd said.

But Lynn Moffett, who has lived in Sterling Ranch for four years and sits on the board of a metro district there, said there are few amenities near the blossoming community, which is planned to include more than 12,000 homes at full buildout.

The South Suburban Recreation Center on County Line Road to the northeast is 20 minutes away “on a good day.” And dining and shopping opportunities in the neighborhood are few, she said.

“We have nothing — and this county is growing like crazy,” Moffett said. “It’s important to have a facility families can send their children to. We all pay taxes in our county — we just want a piece of the pie.”

Likely public-private partnership

Discussions about adding to Douglas County’s inventory of ballfields have been happening for at least a year.

“It was very clear to us that there was this outcry — especially among youth — who wanted more space to play,” Laydon said. “They simply do not have enough space.”

Earlier, there was talk of building a sports complex with playing fields in Highlands Ranch’s 202-acre Wildcat Regional Park, which is owned by the county. But that plan was met with vociferous opposition from residents last year.

Douglas County agreed to transfer the parcel to the Highlands Ranch Community Association in a deal that is expected to be finalized in coming weeks. In turn, the association has agreed to develop a trail network for recreational use at Wildcat.

Meanwhile, Brock Smethills, the president of the Sterling Ranch Development Company, contacted the county about building a sports complex a bit farther south. A 50-acre land donation from Sterling Ranch to Douglas County, the details of which are still being hammered out, started the process.

“We’re giving up some of our best land for the sports complex,” Smethills said. “What we’re asking for in return is an exercise facility our homeowners can use free of charge.”

Douglas County agreed to take the lead in shepherding the project’s first phase.

So far, it has signed a $325,000 consulting contract with Felsburg, Holt and Ullevig to look at potential road infrastructure at the site. It also hired an owner’s representative for just over $70,000. In late July, the commissioners ordered a $410,000 land development study from engineering firm Kimley-Horn.

From the beginning, the county has advertised the construction of the Zebulon Regional Sports Complex as a public-private partnership.

“You need something vertical, you need something there to get people to invest,” Smethills said.

The county, Laydon said, will spearhead the project and then seek out private partners to help build out Zebulon. Completion of all phases of the project, potentially including hotels and restaurants, could take as long as a decade.

A ‘fancy facility for club teams’?

Christine Pomme, a Parker mother whose 12-year-old son plays on the Slammers club baseball team as a first baseman and pitcher, said the need for a facility like Zebulon is clear.

“It’s hard to get a field for practice, let alone for tournaments,” Pomme said.

Her son’s team, the Slammers Yetis, typically have to travel to Centennial for indoor practice and to Highlands Ranch High School for outdoor drills. The indoor facility gets crowded, Pomme said, while the softball fields at the high school aren’t regulation size for baseball.

“The potential of having a full-size outdoor field for practice is really appealing,” she said.

Floyd, the dubious neighbor, wants to know how open and accessible Zebulon will be to county residents. Will it be an exclusive operation primarily catering to expensive organized sports teams, she asked, or more of a community recreation center for those who want to work out and slap a pickleball around with friends?

“Who gets to use them?” she said. “Why should my tax dollars go towards a fancy facility for club teams? This isn’t just some baseball field — this is extravagant.”

Laydon told The Post that Zebulon “would be available for everyone to use.”

Floyd also worries about the state of the land at the Zebulon site, which for more than 60 years was the home of the E.I. Du Pont de Nemours dynamite manufacturing plant. It closed down more than 50 years ago.

In 2022, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued the company a decision letter stating that any contaminants at the site “do not pose a threat to human health and environment, and contamination will continue to decline.”

CDPHE stated in its letter that “no further remediation is required at the site.”

“Without that clean bill of health,” Laydon said, “we wouldn’t consider it.”

Other concerns with Zebulon revolve around the county’s use of the open space and parks fund to finance the early stages of the project. Former Commissioner Lora Thomas, who had a rocky relationship with her colleagues before leaving her elected post before her term expired last December, said she has “seen no plan for how this project is funded.”

“I’m not sure ‘parks’ is a multimillion-dollar sports complex with mixed-use amenities that benefit Sterling Ranch,” Thomas said.

The county, she said, “has no business” spending money on Zebulon “until partners are identified and at the table with their checkbooks.”

She pointed to the troubled Future Legends sports complex under construction in Windsor, parts of which were ordered by a judge last month to remain shuttered until project leaders addressed safety concerns at the facility. She sees that as a warning shot of what could happen at Sterling Ranch.

“A solid financial plan must be developed before a shovel of dirt is moved,” Thomas said.

She also pointed to a citizen survey conducted last year by Douglas County that revealed a “mega-sports complex” was identified by 33% of respondents as the “least appealing option” of a list of potential amenities. The survey also showed that just 22% of respondents were dissatisfied with the number of youth sports facilities in the county.

Projected $1.3 billion impact

In May, the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation and the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce released an economic and fiscal impact analysis of the Zebulon project and the surrounding business activity it is expected to spur.

The analysis estimated that from 2026 to 2036, the sports complex would have an economic impact of $1.3 billion, including $528.4 million in labor income. Nearly 1,800 jobs would be generated “through construction and ongoing operations,” the report stated.

County Manager Doug DeBord said more clarity on the project should be coming in the next few weeks, including better cost estimates and potential partnerships with the private sector.

As for Moffett, the Sterling Ranch resident, she says her community is starved of eateries and entertainment venues, which the Zebulon project is expected to attract. Right now, Sterling Ranch has a microbrewery, a coffee shop and a collection of food trucks that roll through.

“We have nothing,” she said.

With Sterling Ranch about 20% built out to its ultimate population of 35,000, Moffett said demand for places where kids can play and participate in sports will only increase. The recent debut of pickleball courts in Burns Park was a hit.

“As soon as we cut the ribbon, there were people playing,” she said.

A former soccer player who competed at the collegiate level in Europe, Moffett said she’d be one of the first through the doors at Zebulon when it’s up and running.

“I already bought myself a pair of ice skates,” she said.

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