Denver is considering throwing a lifeline to 23,000 planned apartments and residences at risk of never getting built.

Currently, developers have 30 months from the time their project’s site development plan is approved to obtain building permits to begin construction. Otherwise, their SDP expires, and they must resubmit it if they hope to build.

But with an increasing supply of apartments and the costs to build new ones rising, groundbreakings have fallen off a cliff. That means a lot of SDPs are languishing — approved, but with a developer unable or unwilling to break ground. 

“The oversupply our city is experiencing right now is short-lived, and so it’s really important that we keep these shovel-ready projects alive so that we don’t see an undersupply,” said Brad Buchanan, executive director of Denver’s Community Planning and Development department.

Brad Buchanan

Buchanan’s department is pushing the Denver City Council to approve a measure for all projects that had an SDP approved before 2026 to extend the deadline to get their permits by an additional three years.

The Denver Planning Board will be the first governmental body to review the plan. It’s scheduled to weigh in Wednesday afternoon. The City Council will vote on the measure in May. Councilwoman Amanda Sandoval is also sponsoring the bill.

Many of the projects that could be extended were submitted in the months before the July 2022 implementation of the city’s Expanding Housing Affordability ordinance, which requires new residential projects to reserve between 8% and 15% of their units for people making below the median income, or to pay a large fee.

Jonathan Alpert, partner at local developer Westfield, said that requirement would make it more difficult for him to break ground. He has two site development plans approved. Both are 8-story apartment buildings, one in LoDo and one in Cap Hill.

Westfield’s projects would be subject to the EHA if the plans expire and it resubmits them.

“They certainly do not work right now with the headwinds and the market,” Alpert said of his projects. “If we’re subject to the EHA, that exacerbates the issue.

“This potential extension is huge for us.”

Alpert noted that macroeconomic factors, like high interest rates and construction costs, have complicated development nationally. 

“As a result of the oversupply, rents are not there,” he said. “It’s hard to make any of these projects pencil, and demand is down right now.”

The first projects approved before the EHA took effect had their SDPs expire in December, according to Buchanan.

“We’ve lost some others once since then, and we’re about to lose a lot more this year,” he added.

Denver’s apartment vacancy sits at 8.2%, according to the Apartment Association of Metro Denver, the highest since 2010. And concessions on new units have risen to record highs, too. The city saw 10,300 apartments break ground in 2021, far higher than the 2,300 started last year, according to data from JRES Intelica CRE.

But developers are predicting a turnaround. Sean Campbell, president of Formativ, which is constructing projects in RiNo and Littleton, said he sees rents for new apartments rising in the first quarter of next year.

“If Denver is perceived to have an oversupply … cautious institutional investors will say, ‘Hey, let’s wait six or 12 months and then we’ll [break ground],’ and that’s really what this SDP extension is all about,” he said.

But without approved projects ready to break ground, builders may not be able to construct new housing until supply gets overly constrained and rents shoot up.

“If we canceled everybody’s SDP, we wouldn’t have the ability to regenerate the pipeline,” Campbell said.

The Denver Nuggets are back at it after a heartbreaking loss over the weekend. The Nuggets once again find themselves in the spotlight with another national TV game, though I’m sure the execs over at NBC were thinking tonight’s contest was going to be more ballyhooed than it actually is. As it turns out, Denver’s opponent tonight, the Philadelphia 76ers, are still a quality team, but not the Eastern Conference juggernaut they were viewed as just a couple season ago. This is largely due to the health, or lack thereof, including that of star Joel Embiid. Philadelphia is dealing with a litany of injuries this season but unlike the Nuggets, they aren’t nearly as close to a return to health (or in one case, compliance with the league’s PED policy). All-star guard Tyrese Maxey, Paul George, Kelly Oubre…all out tonight.

The Basics

Who: Denver Nuggets (41-27) vs Philadelphia 76ers (37-31)

When: 8:00PM MDT

Where: The Can. Denver, CO.

How to watch/listen: NBC, Peacock, Altitude Sports, Altitude Radio 92.5FM

Rival blog: Liberty Ballers

The Matchup

Injury report: Peyton Watson – out (hamstring), DaRon Holmes II – out (G-League), Curtis Jones – out (G-League), KJ Simpson – out (G-League); Joel Embiid – out (oblique), Tyrese Maxey – out (finger), Paul George – out (juice), Kelly Oubre – out (elbow), Jabari Walker – out (illness), Johni Broome – out (knee).

The Three Things

The thing to watch for: bounce back game from Jamal

Jamal Murray had the worst performance of his season on Saturday vs the Los Angeles Lakers, I expect he’ll right the ship tonight. He’s also got a fairly positive matchup. While V.J. Edgecombe is certainly a talented rookie, he’s still a rookie and guarding Jamal-star is a tall task, especially when you consider Edgecombe is the only thing resembling a scorer on Philadelphia’s active roster right now and will likely be expending a large amount of energy trying to get past Christian Braun. My hope is Jamal lets the game come naturally tonight, but don’t be surprised at all to see him come out of the gate very aggressive.

The thing to remember: These guys get paid to

Yes, the Sixers are decimated. Yes, they are missing their top two players and several role players…can you say trap game? Coming off a big game that they lost in heartbreaking fashion might help the Nuggets here, they should be fully focused on getting a win. We’ve seen this story before too many times though. The Nuggets have been guilty of overlooking inferior opponents and ending up with terrible losses. There’s no room for that now in the ultra-tight 3-6 seed race in the Western Conference. They need to put this one out of reach early and make sure they don’t get caught letting the Sixers believe they can steal a victory at Ball tonight.

The thing to bet: Tim Hardaway Jr. over 2.5 threes (+132)

Look, we know Tim’s going to shoot at least three threes, and probably quite a few more. The only question is how much he will make? I don’t see a ton of reason to think he won’t hit three or more tonight so long as his shot is falling. So far in March he has averaged 2.9 makes on 6.5 attempts so recent history suggests he is very capable of hitting the over and at +132 that’s a bet to take.

The offseason has already been a good one for Broncos cornerback Riley Moss.

Denver’s third-year cornerback finished No. 12 in performance-based pay and brought home an extra $1,136,103 because of it.

That nearly doubles Moss’ pay for the 2025 season considering he had a base salary of $1,245,266.

Performance-based pay is supplemental income distributed each year to players by the NFL based on a formula that weighs playing time against base salary. It is part of the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the NFL Players Association and has been in place since 2002.

The Broncos are the only NFL team to not yet sign a free agent. What’s the strategy?

Any player who plays a snap is eligible and many players receive at least some money, but players who have low salaries and end up playing a lot are typically in line for the biggest distributions.

Moss started all 17 regular-season games for the Broncos and logged 97% of Denver’s defensive snaps while also chipping in 15% of the club’s special teams snaps.

The performance-based pay pool continues to rise across the league. After distributing a total of $452 million a year ago, the league distributed $542 million this year. That means each club’s roster received a total of $16.65 million, up from $14.13 million a year ago.

Behind Moss, four other players topped $800,000: Center Luke Wattenberg ($887,647), nickel Ja’Quan McMillian ($866,178), offensive lineman Alex Palczewski ($853,302) and outside linebacker Dondrea Tillman ($808,853).

Most of the top of the list is young players on rookie contracts or former undrafted free agents. The rest of Denver’s top 10 went WR Troy Franklin, OLB Jonah Elliss, All-Pro special teamer Devon Key, RB Tyler Badie and DL Eyioma Uwazurike.

Established players and top draft picks can earn a good bit of extra money too, though.

Safety Talanoa Hufanga logged 97.7% of playing time based on the calculations and took home an extra $427,726. Starting quarterback Bo Nix got $369,400 and all-pro left guard Quinn Meinerz was right after him at $308,969.