GOLDEN, Colo. — A major overhaul is set to bring new retail, restaurants and affordable housing to the heart of Golden.
This summer, initial processes began for redevelopment of a 12-acre site located on Washington Avenue and 9th Street in downtown Golden.
Since the early 1900s, the site has been the home of ceramics manufacturer, CoorsTek — one of the many business ventures of the Coors family, most commonly associated with Molson Coors Brewing Co. In 2021, CoorsTek opened a new manufacturing facility in a different part of Golden and decided to halt its operations at the historic 9th Street property.
A year prior, the Coors family launched its own real estate company,AC Development, with plans to redevelop the 12-acre site through a project titled CoorsTek Ninth Street Redevelopment
"Rather than sell the 12-plus acre site or lease it to another industrial user, the Coors family determined, instead, to transform the centrally located property into a vibrant, highly sustainable, mixed-use district with a new CoorsTek global headquarters situated at its core," the company said in a statement on its website.
The project is expected to take at least a decade and cost between $600 million and $900 million. Golden City Council approved the project's rezoning in June after at least of a year public hearings and collaboration with company.
In addition to new retail, office and business spaces, the site will also feature the new CoorsTek global headquarters. AC Development has also committed to including affordable housing units.
"When we first heard about development, we were worried that we'd see them selling to some big developer who has no connection to the town," said Thad Briggs, co-founder of Mountain Toad Brewing. "It was really positive to know that the Coors family is gonna be involved."
Briggs' brewery is located across the street from the redevelopment.
"It's gonna bring a lot of economic development to Golden, and it's going to be a long-term project. My biggest concern is just going to be traffic and, you know, construction mess," he said.
Those worries are overshadowed, as Briggs described it, by his hope for increased foot traffic in the northern portion of Golden's downtown.
"We see people come down the street from downtown, and the tourists will look around, and if they're not in the mood for a brewery, they'll just walk back down," Briggs said. "It's going to bring us sort of gravity."
Bart Pinkham, owner of Golden River Sports, shared similar sentiments.
"Before the bike shop was here and the brewery, it was really hard to get people to go any further than the bridge down there [and travel] up to this part of town, unless they were specifically looking for our business," he said. "General foot traffic was very sparse."
You can read more about the redevelopment process in this comprehensive reportby Judith Kohler of our partner, The Denver Post.