The ongoing $1-billion-plus redevelopment project includes several key stakeholders: the city and county of Denver, Colorado State University and the National Western Center Authority, all of which own, fund and/or operate various elements on the campus. Construction of the Legacy Building has been largely financed by donors.

“I think it’s one of the landmark [examples] of a public-private partnership,” says Peter Coors, former chairman of the Molson Coors Brewing Co., who is an association board member and chairman of the Legacy Building capital campaign committee. Naming opportunities for “everything from bricks to brands” have been part of the campaign and added a layer of complexity to the design, he adds.

Saunders Construction has topped out the structural steel and slab-on-deck building, targeting completion in late 2025.
Photo courtesy of Saunders Construction

Built for the Next Century

The association has had “antiquated” offices and event spaces for decades, says Coors. “The facilities are very old and need to be replaced and upgraded.”

When the plan to redevelop the broader campus emerged nearly a decade ago, Coors was tasked with fundraising for the project, but he immediately detected a void in the initial concept. “My first question was, ‘Well, where are the new headquarters for National Western?’” he says. “And it wasn’t in the plan.”

Fundraising among the association's 1,500 members would be difficult without it, he argued, so the idea gained traction. “We came to the conclusion we could build a headquarters for $50 million,” Coors says. “That was eight years ago, and that delay has raised the price of the building to $100 million.”

The aim is to create something both timeless and durable, with a weathered steel, sandstone and glass exterior and numerous interior finishes often handpicked by stakeholders and donors.

An art gallery, history museum and saloon on the first level segues into conference and office space on the second and third levels. The building’s fourth level, for the National Western Club, will feature six bars in four distinct areas—including its namesake 10,000-sq-ft National Western Club—and three formidable stone fireplaces. The building will integrate with the NWC Livestock Center—a project of the city and county of Denver—designed for visitors to view events taking place on the Livestock Center floor.

Ryan Balakas, Saunders vice president and general manager, says the structure is “a fairly traditional concrete foundation system with steel and slab on a metal deck skeleton. There is one component of the fourth floor that has a [cross-laminated timber] lumber-type framing system that forms this very cool vaulted ceiling over the fourth floor.”

“This is a 100-year building,” says Leah Hanke, senior associate at Tryba. “We’re really going to have to hold the standards of quality to the highest level because that’s what our client expects.”

Because of that, the project has required a flexible, iterative approach. “All of the trades were modeling everything to a T so that we could really get a jump-start on any clashes,” Hanke says. “It was a really joint process to get some of these tight spaces to work.”

Hanke also stressed the importance of “telling the story of how the building is going to change over time.” For example, the weathered steel on the exterior, inspired by old barns, will take on a darker red hue as it ages.

The association mission is “preserving the history, legacy and culture of the West,” says Coors. “We think that’s an important thing to pass along to future generations. Western lifestyle is incredibly important and those who came before us, the pioneers and the pathfinders, need to be recognized and remembered and their values shared with coming generations."

He says “this building really is designed and equipped to do that. This isn’t just another office building, it is a real center of education and promise for the future.”

The construction team is maximizing every square inch of the property with creative crane placement.
Photo courtesy of Saunders Construction

Hitches and Workarounds

Balakas described “a very iterative process” working with numerous organizations and individuals on a wide range of details and finishes, which will include donor names. “That’s been a challenge for not only ourselves, but also for Tryba to work through with various community stakeholders and contributors to the project to make sure their vision for the building is being represented,” he says.

The project’s primary challenges have included site space constraints with an adjacent active construction project at the NWC Livestock Center, he says. The proximity to that Whiting-Turner-led project includes an actual integration in a cantilevered suite with a view of the center’s arena from the Legacy Building’s fourth floor.

From a code perspective, the two structures are technically classified as one building. Balakas says integrating life safety systems was the largest hurdle for the building team.

“The property line is four inches from either side of the building, so it has involved sequencing as well as [working with] Whiting-Turner’s team when it needs access or when we need to have access,” says Hanke.

All of that was complicated by the parcel size. “Despite it being a fairly large campus in terms of acreage, the area that we’re building on is kind of a postage stamp,” says Balakas.

Allan Morales, Saunders senior superintendent, says the 40,000-sq-ft property required a more choreographed approach than most projects. “When we first started, we approached it as a zero-lot project, but the more we got into the drawings and the setup, this is actually what we call a minus-lot project,” he says. “The building takes 90% of the area and 10% is laydown.”

A vaulted ceiling provides the right ambiance for event venues on the National Western Club Level.
Photo courtesy of Saunders Construction

That meant steel deliveries needed to be staged about one-half-mile away and adhere to a rigorous schedule. “It forced us to essentially coordinate hour by hour because we would have semitrailer after semitrailer full of steel from our supplier in Nebraska,” Morales says. “We actually coordinated what time [shipments] were leaving Nebraska to figure out when they were going to be on site, and where to stage the semitrailers and the surplus.”

The scarce elbow room also affected crane use and placement, Morales says. “We were only able to travel approximately 150 feet back and forth for all of our picks with a tremendously big crane roller. Usually with a crane like that, you just drive all the way around the building.”

Saunders originally joined the project in 2016, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed groundbreaking. “We mobilized and started construction right after the 2024 Stock Show very intentionally to avoid all the traffic and other things related to that,” says Balakas. “This year, it was inescapable.”

With the National Western Stock Show drawing more than 600,000 attendees every January, that meant “a lot of enhanced security and a little bit different worker access and material access to the site” during the 2025 event, he adds. The initial plan had been to shut down the crew, but “we were able to get to a place where [it was agreed] for us to have some portion of the work continue.”

Coors says the show offered potential donors a close look at the building as a work-in-progress. Saunders team members were "incredibly generous with their time and expertise to share that incredible building under construction and allow us to get around,” he says. “It was important to our campaign to have people go in. They were awestruck and excited about the design possibilities and what we’ve been able to accomplish.”

Some of the building’s overhangs required easements from adjacent properties.
Photo courtesy of Saunders Construction

Masonry and Fireplaces

Highlighting the Legacy Building’s stonework inside and out, Balakas says the exterior curtain wall is “a pretty unique stone system. It’s large-format panelized stone ... as opposed to brick by brick or stone by stone.” Atkinson-Noland & Associates, with offices in Boulder, Colo., and New York City, is masonry subcontractor, and Lyons Sandstone of Lyons, Colo., is providing stone for the exterior and fireplaces.

The four fireplaces, three of which are on the club level and one in the lobby, have been major focal points of the project. “Our team has talked a lot about the fireplaces and how intricate and significant [their] coordination and installation has been,” Balakas says. The team is using a UNIC Spydercrane URW295 mini-crawler crane for fireplace stone placement, with an assist from digital scanning and modeling tools.

“We’re leaning heavily on technology for the success of the project,” Morales says. “There’s not a square inch of this building that’s not being touched by somebody or something.”