Now that the Broncos are set to make the Burnham Yard their new stadium home, Denver city planners will face an even heavier workload — just as city staffing shrinks and budget cuts loom in the coming year.

At the same time, they’ll have to juggle the needs of Mayor Mike Johnston’s “catalytic” investments in the new NWSL stadium and the Park Hill Golf Course with the hundreds of permits that come in daily, ranging from small projects like new electrical panels and roof work to larger projects downtown.

But Denver’s interim planning director, Brad Buchanan, is confident his department is up to the task and plans on using some of those challenges as an opportunity “to streamline and look for innovations throughout the entire process.”

For 2025, the city’s Community Planning and Development Department had a total of 310 budgeted positions. For 2026, that number has been pared down by 59 positions to 251, according to city documents.

Buchanan, in an organizational briefing to Johnston and members of the city council earlier this month, said that in light of the constraints, CPD will continue its focus on core services, including meeting the 180-day permitting timeline enacted in April by the mayor.

Created by executive order, the “shot clock” sets an expedited timeline for the city to review and approve permits for renovations and new construction. In cases where the city fails to meet that deadline, applicants may appeal to the Denver Permitting Office, with the city refunding up to $10,000 in some cases.

Efforts will be made to prioritize planning for areas with the highest need and where major new developments have the potential to impact existing communities.

“There’s nothing that we will stop doing that we don’t intentionally want to stop doing,” Buchanan said. ”We have been looking at systems improvements, a lot of things.”

Buchanan added that technology had lent a hand in helping make inspection routes more efficient by leveraging the city’s existing geospatial data, saving time and resources.

CPD teams and managers also have a “just stop it” list with more than 100 items that “no longer create value” for the organization or the customers it serves.

“There were a lot of those, and so, things like the parking minimum requirement, are going away,” he said.

While Buchanan emphasized that core services will remain a priority, he added that some initiatives, such as the Neighborhood Planning Initiative (NPI), may not be implemented as quickly.

The NPI program was originally launched to accelerate the planning process by tackling multiple areas simultaneously, rather than one neighborhood at a time.

CPD is about to embark on the Southwest and Park Hill neighborhood plans.

“This (NPI projects) is one of the places where we’re going to where we’re going to have less capacity than we had before,” Buchanan said. “Whereas when we have been doing three concurrent neighborhood plans up to this point, and we’ll still be doing three, but they’ll be staggered – so there’ll be two concurrent neighborhood plans.”

Buchanan added that the neighborhood plans have historically been staggered.

“They don’t all commence or finish on the same day, so the stagger will have to be assessed based on the available staff resources for those NPI plans.”

Denver residents will learn more about proposed cuts to city programs and services when the mayor delivers his proposed 2026 budget to the City Council on Monday.