Centralized customer service hub and city office building at the Alpine-Balsam site.

Current Phase
Build

Project Overview

The Western City Campus (WCC) will be a new centralized location for several city customer service functions and staff offices. By bringing many city departments under one roof, our goal is to provide a consistent and helpful customer experience. This new campus is a key component of the Facilities Master Plan, which will incorporate city values such as sustainability, financial responsibility, inclusivity and accessibility.

This strategic move is intended to provide efficiency and connection for both community members and city staff. Situated on 2.4 acres of the original 8.8-acre Alpine-Balsam site, the Western City Campus will feature a range of essential city services, office spaces, a community space and a parking garage.

The City of Boulder is committed to ensuring that the Western City Campus becomes a vibrant, accessible, and sustainable hub for all residents.

The Western City Campus will:

  • Create a lively, interactive campus with bustling plazas and engaging spaces
  • Build a welcoming environment for all
  • Support an accessible customer service experience for everyone
  • Develop a campus that fosters a deep sense of community and belonging
  • Showcase City of Boulder values through innovative design and architecture
  • Be a global leader in low carbon redevelopment
  • Make significant advances towards meeting climate action goals for city facilities

Purpose of the Western City Campus

The development of the Western City Campus is driven by several critical needs. The City of Boulder expanded into leased spaces to hold staff and the growing services, leaving services and staff scattered across the city. The current buildings are in a state of disrepair and require substantial investment to maintain. The cost to repair and continue to chase these critical failures is the equal to the price tag as the Western City Campus. In the city’s current buildings, we are not able to meet our climate action plan goals to electrify buildings because our capital and emergency funding is spent on fixing the failing infrastructure. The Western City Campus will provide a unified space where city staff can work more effectively, moving away from the inefficiencies of being spread across multiple locations. By consolidating many services in one central location, we aim to create a better space for public engagement and provide the community with a consistent, reliable destination for accessing city services, and achieving our climate commitment goals - an approach that is vastly different from our current operations.

Timeline

  • 2024: Community engagement, operational analysis and architectural design
  • 2025: Construction begins
  • 2027: Campus grand opening

Building Design

The design of the Western City Campus reflects the community's desire for a more sustainable and pedestrian-friendly environment. Through an extensive area planning process, it became clear that promoting alternative modes of transportation was a priority. As a result, the campus will prioritize expanded walking and biking paths and minimize parking to encourage more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.

Public Art

The city's Public Art Program commissions a wide variety of artworks representing the most innovative approaches to contemporary practice in the arts, works of enduring value, and a diversity of artists and arts experiences within Boulder.

Three different artists and pieces of art have been chosen for the Western City Campus:

Construction Impacts

  • July 6 - 14, the southbound bus stop between Balsam Ave. and Alpine Ave. (serving the 208 and SKIP) will be closed. RTD will issue alerts to riders and post them on their website (visit the SKIP alert page and the 208 alert page). The northbound stop will remain open.
  • July 13 - 14, three-lane closure on Broadway for 24 hours. One lane in each direction will remain open.
  • Now - July 31, east end of Alpine Ave. expected to remain closed to allow for continued work between the garage and new office.
  • Now - Sept. 30, southbound Broadway sidewalk between Balsam Ave. and Alpine Ave. is closed.
  • View Cone Zones for up-to-date construction impacts.
  • outside of large building with lots of windows and wide stairway to entrance doors.

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  • Corner of Western City Campus on the corner of Alpine and Broadway streest

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  • Render of side of large building spanning a block. Building has large windows and stone walls.

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  • Corner of building at night with lights inside providing brightness to the plaza and street out front.

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  • Plaza area outside building at night with people hanging out and socializing and walking and biking through.

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  • Large plaza area outside building with opportunity for people to hangout

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    • Frequently Asked Questions

    The Western City Campus (WCC) is a purpose-built, functional facility designed to consolidate city services that are currently spread across more than 20 locations in aging, inefficient buildings.

    The city has been seeking solutions to aging facilities and office space needs since at least 2015. When the opportunity to purchase the Boulder Community Hospital site came up, the city began to explore a new way to address this issue.

    After detailed analysis, including community engagement, City Council decided to consolidate city services to the Alpine-Balsam site. The 2021 Facilities Plan — also developed with community input — found that Boulder's current building portfolio averages 47 years in age, carries $55 million in deferred maintenance today, and is projected to require $307 million in maintenance investment by 2050 if we stay on the current path. The city plans to consolidate staff from 10 other city buildings into the footprint that includes the re-purposed Pavilion Building and the Brenton Building across the street. Two of the city facilities being consolidated to the WCC are within the high hazard zone of the floodplain, which limit our ability to reinvest in them and make necessary repairs. These two buildings will be demolished. Others are planned to be sold.

    Yes, this project was revisited. The 2021 Facilities Plan was developed after the pandemic and directly incorporated analysis of hybrid work patterns. The conclusion was counterintuitive, but sound — hybrid work strengthens the case for consolidation, not against it. When employees are in a city office fewer days per week, it becomes more feasible, not less, to consolidate into a single, well-designed shared space rather than maintaining multiple buildings for a workforce that no longer requires them all simultaneously. The result is a building designed for a smaller daily footprint, which reduces cost.

    On leasing commercial space: Boulder evaluated this alternative approach. The fundamental problem with long-term leasing is that it trades capital costs for permanent operating costs and provides no pathway out of the deferred maintenance crisis on the buildings we already own. The city government is a permanent function in our community, and remaining dependent on commercial lease markets for core government operations presents risk. The 30-year math consistently favors ownership of purpose-built space for large, stable organizations like city governments.

    Following the COVID pandemic, like most other cities, we adopted a hybrid work schedule. All eligible office workers are required to work in a city facility at least two days per week, and current trends show that quite a few choose to come onsite more frequently to be most effective in their work. We are not in a position as a city government to reduce our onsite needs more, and we need to have an appropriately scaled office facility. As an additional point of clarity, only about 50% of the city’s employees are eligible for hybrid work based on their job function.

    Remaining workers such as police officers, firefighters, transportation & utilities maintenance, recreation center staff, etc. all work in-person only.

    The WCC program was explicitly changed to account for hybrid work — meaning the building interior was redesigned to account for a 2:1 occupancy of staff. Prior to the pandemic, we were planning on roughly 200-250 employees being assigned to the building. It is being constructed now to have more than 600 employees assigned to the building. Much of the space is designed for shared and flexible use rather than assigned individual offices, which reduces the total square footage required per person. The ground floor will provide enhanced and centralized customer service opportunities, as well as a large meeting room, which, combined with an additional meeting room on the lowest level, will increase publicly available gathering space in Boulder.

    While the comparison to private sector office decisions is understandable, there are meaningful differences. Private companies can shed office space and ask employees to work from home indefinitely. City government cannot. Planning and permitting, licensing, code enforcement, and other municipal services require the opportunity for in-person public service windows, secure file access, legal document handling, and staff coordination that cannot be fully performed remotely. The city's obligation is to maintain accessible, functional space for public services — not just for internal staff convenience.

    The broader point stands, though: The City of Boulder is not building more space than it needs. The Facilities Plan is explicit that consolidation reduces the city's total square footage — the goal is fewer and better buildings, not more of them.

    Western City Campus is expected to be open to the community in 2027.

    • General inquiry and assistance

    • Business licensing

    • Dog licensing

    • Neighborhood grants

    • Parking permits

    • Rental assistance

    • Food truck assistance

    • Utility bill pay

    • Pothole reporting

    • Volunteer/event support

    • Legal services

    • Financial aid

    • Housing programs

    • Energy advising

    • Transit passes

    • Ticket payments

    • Park shelter rentals

    • Building permits

    • Landmark review

    The city plans to consolidate staff from 10 other city buildings into the footprint that includes the re-purposed Pavilion Building and the Brenton Building across the street. Two of the city facilities being consolidated to the WCC are within the high hazard zone of the floodplain, which limit our ability to reinvest in them and make necessary repairs. These two buildings will be demolished. Others are planned to be sold.