United is moving forward with plans to develop a portion of more than 100 acres it owns near Denver International Airport, marking a major investment by the carrier in the region and stoking rumors about its potential corporate relocation.
The Chicago-based airline has submitted a preliminary proposal to the city and county of Denver for a new flight training center campus to be built on a portion of the acreage it purchased for $33 million last year. For United, the land near the airport — the airline's second-busiest hub behind Chicago's O'Hare International Airport — is expected to not only support the company's Colorado growth but also leaves the door open for future real estate moves down the road.
"This property gives us a lot of options," United spokesperson Russell Carlton told CoStar News. "We’ve already begun work on plans to use part of this land as the site for the expansion of our world-class Denver pilot training facility and we’ll evaluate additional opportunities in the future as [our plan] unfolds."
In the near term, United is planning to build 12 flight simulators and their “required training and support facilities," most of which will be located at the intersection of 64th Avenue and Yampa Street. The airline is aiming for the first phase of the campus to be operational in the second half of 2027, according to the plans.
The new training center, which is estimated to complete construction in 2028, would serve as a satellite campus to a $100 million, four-story project United broke ground on last year in Denver's Central Park neighborhood.
The carrier trains roughly 16,500 pilots each year at its existing Flight Training Center in the Denver area, a property that is struggling to accommodate United's growth plans. The current campus spans about 20 acres and employs upwards of 1,000 people.
'Big Plans To Grow'
The future training facility would only occupy a small portion of the site at 17671 E. 64th Ave., and United's ongoing investment and expansion in the Denver area has prompted rumors that it could potentially relocate from its longtime Chicago headquarters.
The Colorado expansion has caught the attention of state and local officials in Illinois. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently said he and his staff have spoken with United Airlines executives and the company has no current plans to relocate from the state.
“Both the governor and members of his administration have had conversations with United regarding their plans for a campus in Colorado, and United assured the governor’s office they have no intentions of moving out of state,” Pritzker’s office said in a statement.
Yet when asked if the airline could use the land to relocate its corporate headquarters from the 110-story Willis Tower in Chicago to the Denver area, the company neither confirmed nor denied the possibility.
"We have been in Chicago for decades and have thousands of employees here," Carlton told CoStar News. "The land in Denver gives us options for the future as we implement our big plans to grow."
In city plans, the carrier laid out the possibility of being able to accommodate about 5,000 employees at the proposed flight training campus once it is fully built out. While it isn't an immediate or concrete plan to expand its headcount in the Denver area — city planning officials require an estimate of how many people could theoretically be based at any proposed development — it does hint at the options for which United is keeping the door open.
The Denver development plans extend a string of real estate moves the global carrier has made over the past several years, many of which have shifted its presence in and around its Chicago headquarters. While United remains the largest tenant in the Willis Tower — it leases more than 800,000 square feet in the city's tallest building — it shed about 20% of its original footprint in the skyscraper in the early days of the pandemic and has since relocated hundreds of employees from downtown Chicago to a separate operations center in the suburbs.
United Airlines' swelling investment to expand its Denver-area presence has made it one of the city's largest private employers and a significant source of economic development for the region. The carrier employed roughly 10,100 workers in the area at the time of its acquisition last August. Its corporate footprint, in addition to its Chicago headquarters, also includes a hub in Houston and a significant presence in San Francisco.
Along with its burgeoning workforce — Denver is now the company's fourth-largest employment hub in the country — United officials said it would invest nearly $825 million to expand its operations in the city as it adds more flights, gates, routes, lounges, and of course, real estate.
CoStar News reporter Ryan Ori contributed to this article.