"We've sold our 100+ acre land plot in Broomfield, CO to UCHealth." That one line from Ikea's U.S. press office, quoted by the Broomfield Enterprise last February, ended a wait that had lasted since Ikea bought the land at the northwest corner of Interstate 25 and Colo. 7 in 2016. The company said it was moving toward smaller stores and reusing existing retail locations.
Eight months later, the corner is headed somewhere no one predicted in 2016. Two hospital systems want to build on facing corners of the same interchange, and Children's Hospital Colorado already runs a campus a short drive west. Both new plans go before Broomfield City Council on November 10, 2026. The hospital plans themselves look fairly settled. The roads that will carry everyone to them are still being worked out.
Two corners, one interchange
The two sites sit directly across Baseline Road from each other at the I-25 interchange. UCHealth's Broomfield North Campus takes the northwest corner. AdventHealth's site takes the southwest corner.
A few hundred yards west is Children's Hospital Colorado North Campus at 469 State Highway 7, about half a mile west of I-25. It already offers 24/7 pediatric emergency care, urgent care, specialty care, surgery, and cancer and blood-disorder services. If both new projects are built, three hospital campuses will cluster around a single highway exit. Before February, the northern end of that stretch of Baseline was mostly vacant land waiting for a furniture store.
Here is what each system has filed with the city:
| UCHealth Broomfield North Campus | AdventHealth Broomfield | |
|---|---|---|
| Corner | Northwest, I-25 and CO 7 | Southwest, I-25 and CO 7 |
| Site size | About 110 acres | About 42 acres |
| Hospital | 367,000 sq ft, 140 feet tall | About 414,000 sq ft, six stories |
| Medical office building | 169,000 sq ft, 84 feet tall | About 80,000 sq ft, four stories |
| Beds | 120 in phase one, 128 at buildout, per its traffic study | 200, per the applicant |
| Emergency access | Separate ambulance and walk-in access points | Emergency department on the main facade, plus a proposed helipad |
| Opening target | No later than end of 2029 | No timeline released |
The buildings have grown since January
Both plans have changed since they were first announced, and the changes run in the same direction. In January, BizWest described UCHealth's concept as a hospital of about 330,000 square feet and a medical office building of about 140,000. The formal filing raised those to 367,000 and 169,000. AdventHealth's January concept was a five-story building of 443,880 square feet with no bed count. The current city page lists six stories, about 414,000 square feet, and 200 beds.
UCHealth's 140-foot hospital depends on a separate step. The site falls under the Northlands planned unit development, and UCHealth asked the city to amend it, raising the allowed height for hospital and medical office buildings from 60 feet to 150 feet. That amendment had hearings listed for June 22 and July 28, 2026, but the city page reviewed for this post does not report how the council voted. Until that outcome is confirmed, the 140-foot figure is a proposal.
Capacity is the other open question. The Denver Post reported in February that UCHealth's concept included 60 beds, an ICU, and higher-acuity trauma, neurosurgery and cancer care. The Post also reported that UCHealth's existing Broomfield Hospital would stay open. That hospital has 40 beds, opened in 2016, and sits in the southwestern part of the city, about 10 miles from the North Campus site. A UCHealth executive told BizWest in January that the new hospital "is absolutely an expansion" of its Broomfield services, not a replacement. The traffic impact study UCHealth filed with the city uses a larger number than the Post did, assuming 120 hospital beds in phase one and 128 at full buildout, which the study places by 2050. The project description itself gives no bed count. It lists advanced specialty and primary care, plus future mixed-use development. UCHealth spokesperson Dan Weaver told the Enterprise the campus would include "a hospital, specialty clinics and mixed-use options including retail, dining, hospitality and housing." So the retail that once came with the Ikea plan could still arrive, as one part of a medical campus.
The roads are less settled than the buildings
The hospital buildings are on paper in detail. The roads around them are mostly recommendations.
AdventHealth's project relies on a realigned Huron Street. Its narrative places the site southeast of Baseline and the "future relocated Huron Street," with ambulance access from Baseline, a signalized main entrance on Huron, and a separate Huron entrance for the medical office building. The realignment is a separate roadway plan, and its applicant is the Baseline Metropolitan District, not the hospital.
UCHealth's plan uses CO 7 for primary access and extends West 169th Avenue to a ring road inside the campus. The city notes that the extension still has to be checked against city standards.
The traffic studies filed for each project recommend changes along roughly the same stretch:
- A traffic signal and a northbound right-turn lane where the UCHealth site meets Huron Street and 169th Avenue.
- Restriping or signal changes at the I-25 and CO 7 interchange and at Huron and CO 7.
- A signal at AdventHealth's full-movement Huron access, from the study filed under the name "Project Oak."
- Added or reconfigured lanes at Huron and CO 7, also from the Project Oak study.
Huron and CO 7 shows up in both studies. Two hospital entrances, a relocated street, and the interchange ramps all feed into that one intersection. These are consultant recommendations still under review, not approved or funded projects. The longer-range scenarios in the traffic documents include a diverging-diamond interchange at I-25 and CO 7 and more capacity at CO 7 and Huron, but those appear as planning assumptions, not near-term commitments tied to the hospitals.
What's already there
The northwest corner is not empty. The city's description of the area around the UCHealth site lists the Palisade Park development, an existing park, a 216-unit apartment complex, a gas station, a fast-food restaurant, and Children's Hospital. It also notes the approved Brownstones Phase II housing and SunCap flex-industrial development nearby.
The AdventHealth side is more open. The city describes its surroundings as largely undeveloped, with Palisade Park and Children's Hospital to the northwest, vacant land along Baseline to the south, a cemetery to the southeast, and a retail center in Thornton across I-25.
For anyone living or working in Palisade Park, the Brownstones, or the apartments nearby, this means construction traffic, new signals, and eventually ambulance and helicopter traffic, all arriving at different times. AdventHealth's helipad proposal is part of its city-filed plan.
Where things stand on October 5
Broomfield's Land Use Review Commission heard both projects on September 14 and recommended both site plans for approval, according to BizWest's September 16 report. The vote counts were not in the publicly available part of that story. City Council takes up both on November 10.
On timing, UCHealth's March project description says the hospital and medical office building should open to patients no later than the end of 2029, with four months before opening set aside for staff training. In February, Weaver said UCHealth hoped to break ground in 2026. No source reviewed for this post confirms that groundbreaking has happened, and with council approval still pending, an October groundbreaking seems unlikely. AdventHealth had not released a construction or opening timeline as of the Post's February report, and the later city materials add none.
Another UCHealth story from Broomfield ran on October 5 and is easy to mix up with this one. The Denver Business Journal reported that most of the 117 employees at the Broomfield location of Trinsic, a care network, are expected to become UCHealth employees in December. Becker's Hospital Review reported that Intermountain Health is leaving the network, which it ran jointly with UCHealth. The Broomfield unit is set to close December 4, and UCHealth takes over the network after December 7. None of the reporting connects that staffing change to the hospital campus at Baseline.
The city takes public comments on both projects through its Broomfield Voice pages for the UCHealth North Campus and AdventHealth Broomfield. Each page lists key dates and links to the filed site plans, project narratives and traffic studies, including the Huron Street and 169th Avenue recommendations described above.
If you own near Baseline and I-25 and want to talk through what a project this size could mean for your plans over the next few years, Mark Hutchinson is glad to go over the filings with you and give you a straight answer. Let's Connect.
