GREELEY — As opponents of the city-approved financing plan for the $1.1 billion Catalyst entertainment district prepare to start circulating a new petition, an outside group explored a different approach in a public discussion group Monday night: not stopping the project but working with the city and developers to make sure the community gets the most benefits from it.
The office of Greeley City Clerk Heidi Leatherwood informed interest group Greeley Deserves Better on Monday that it could begin collecting signatures for a new ballot issue that would ask voters in an election next year to overturn the project’s zoning.
Greeley Deserves Better will have until Oct. 16, 30 days after the Greeley City Council’s Sept. 16 vote to approve a planned unit development for more than 833 acres of the Cascadia project, to collect 4,586 valid signatures to place the issue on the ballot. That figure is 10% of the 45,858 registered Greeley voters who cast ballots in the last municipal election.
The new referendum differs from Greeley Deserves Better’s first ballot issue, an initiative that would have asked voters whether to repeal the financing plan for the project.
“Put simply, the Catalyst project is contingent on zoning,” Greeley Deserves Better attorney Suzanne Taheri told BizWest last week. “Once the petition is turned in and found sufficient, the zoning ordinance cannot go into effect until voters decide, halting any forward motion of this deal.”
Added Greeley city spokesperson Winna Ironkwe, “A referendum petition does not immediately pause an ordinance. An ordinance is still in effect unless a completed referendum petition with enough valid signatures is filed.”
Greeley Deserves Better had collected nearly 1,000 more verified signatures of registered Greeley voters than it needed to place its initial repeal initiative on the November ballot, but four Greeley residents protested the validity of the petitions, triggering an Aug. 26 hearing before city-appointed arbiter Karen Goldman, who ruled five days later that ordinances such as the one passed by the City Council were administrative in nature, not legislative, and thus cannot be repealed by voters under state law. Greeley Deserves Better then asked Weld District Court to overturn Goldman’s ruling, but District Judge Allison J. Esser blocked the issue on the day before the deadline for adding it to the Nov. 4 ballot, contending that the dispute needed further review.
The underlying issues of that lawsuit remain undecided, but Greeley Deserves Better did withdraw a second lawsuit alleging that the Catalyst financing plan violated the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
‘Community Benefits Agreement’
With Many Hands, the group with roots in New Mexico and California that paid for social-media advertising supporting Greeley Deserves Better’s initial petition drive last summer, hosted a discussion Monday night at the recently reopened Downtown Armory, 614 8th Ave. The session, which was open to the public, focused on crafting the terms of a proposed “Community Benefit Agreement.”
Such a pact, With Many Hands wrote on its Facebook page, “is just that, how the community benefits. Cities give sweetheart deals to corporations all the time with no real promises to the community. We can’t bet our future on pinky promises.
“With Many Hands is championing a Community Benefit Agreement led by Greeley community members in order to get what we need out of economic-development projects. What kind of local jobs will these projects provide? Will profits support affordable housing, child care, infrastructure for all this flooding? These are the questions community members want answered.”
A similar agreement is being negotiated between owners of the National Football League’s Denver Broncos and residents of Denver’s La Alma and Lincoln Park neighborhoods before construction can begin on a new football stadium in the Burnham Yard area. Such an agreement may include requirements such as funding youth programs, creating bike lanes and building an early-learning center.
In a TikTok video replayed on With Many Hands’ Instagram page, Joel Patterson, a journeyman electrician and 11-year Greeley resident, said that in such an agreement, “we can demand organized labor requirements, create apprenticeship opportunities, and skilled construction trades for long-term career growth for Greeley residents. These labor requirements would ensure safety standards and quality workmanship, avoiding the exploitation of unskilled workers, unsafe conditions and negligent working conditions.”
Such an agreement involving Catalyst also could include guarantees of housing and enhanced transportation for the workers building the project, which is to include a new arena, hotel and water park along U.S. Highway 34 on Greeley’s western edge.
The entertainment district will be largely surrounded by Cascadia, a new mixed-use development by Windsor-based Water Valley Co. Martin Lind, who heads Water Valley, also owns the Colorado Eagles minor-league hockey team which will play at the new arena.
The labor provisions of such an agreement, Patterson said, would mean “no failed inspections or delays” and “no contractors carrying the debt of the project being refused payment dragged through court until they either go bankrupt or make an unfair settlement for compensation.”
This article was first published by BizWest, an independent news organization, and is published under a license agreement. © 2025 BizWest Media LLC. Y
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