The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art's project page still shows a timeline graphic that runs from May 2026 to late 2029. It moves through schematic design, city review, demolition, groundbreaking and occupancy. The application the developer filed with the City of Boulder on September 9, 2026 gives a later set of dates. It estimates construction will start in January 2028 and finish in May 2030.
For anyone who drives, bikes or walks past the northwest corner of Broadway and Violet Avenue, the gap between those two schedules is the useful part. The museum is coming. The corner as it looks today has more time left than the earlier graphic suggested.
The filing that landed on September 9
Emerald Development, which the filing identifies as the Ghadimi Family LLLP, submitted Site Review and rezoning applications for the North Boulder Creative Campus on September 9. The city case number is LUR2026-00068. The written statement covers two parcels totaling about 3.16 acres.
- 4401 Broadway is 2.52 acres held by Emerald Investments I LLC.
- 4481 Broadway is 0.64 acres held by Urban Shops LLC.
The filing describes what stands there now as a former automobile dealership plus a small commercial center with restaurants, retail and service businesses. An earlier property fact sheet names the former dealership as Super Rupair Auto Sales.
The city's planning for a museum here predates the application by two years. The North Boulder Subcommunity Plan was adopted in 1995, and its 2024 amendment marked out a "Creative Campus" area at Broadway and Violet. That area runs south of Fourmile Canyon Creek from 10th Street east to 13th. The amendment named a museum among the expected uses, along with housing, retail, light industrial and manufacturing, art studios and community open space. The September application is the formal step that turns that plan into buildings.
Two schedules for the same corner
| Milestone | BMoCA timeline graphic | Developer's September 2026 estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Overall span | May 2026 to late 2029 | Filing submitted September 9, 2026 |
| City Site Review approval | Shown as a phase, no month given | May 2027 |
| Technical document approval | Not shown | December 2027 |
| Construction start | Groundbreaking shown, no month given | January 2028 |
| Finish | Occupancy by late 2029 | Construction complete May 2030 |
The developer labels every future date as an estimate that may change. Still, the September dates are the newest on record. A June 2026 report in Mile High CRE expected groundbreaking in late 2027, and the filing has since moved that date.
On the developer's estimate, construction would start about 14 months after this post publishes. Work would then run about two years and four months, from January 2028 to May 2030. No demolition date appears in the filing. The city has also not set a Planning Board hearing date.
What the strip holds until then
According to the filing, about 30% of the commercial space at the corner is vacant. The remaining leases are set to end before redevelopment begins and include redevelopment provisions. The project team says it is reaching out to businesses well before demolition and will provide relocation resources, with the goal of helping interested businesses stay in Boulder.
Two tenants anchor the strip for most people who stop there. Little Tibet lists its address as 4479 N Broadway and posts a Tibetan and Indian menu with online ordering on its own site. A few doors down, Boulder Weekly listed Carnicería La Zacatecana as a Mexican grocery at 4483 Broadway in a March 2024 market guide. Neither business has announced a closure or a move tied to the campus. If you have a regular order at either one, the September schedule gives you more than a year of normal visits before construction is even scheduled to start.
Why the new buildings will sit higher than the street
The design choice neighbors will notice most is height, and the filing explains it directly. Fourmile Canyon Creek runs along the northern edge of the site. According to the application, 4401 Broadway lies within both the 100-year and 500-year floodplains, and 4481 Broadway lies within the 100-year floodplain. Flood protection rules require higher ground-floor elevations across the campus, and the filing calls that the primary driver of both height requests.
There are two separate requests:
- Residential buildings need extra height to fit three full stories above the required flood protection elevation.
- The museum needs extra height so it can be raised while keeping tall gallery ceilings for larger works. Longer structural spans also call for deeper-than-usual structural systems.
The filing also asks to rezone the site. 4401 Broadway is currently split between RM-1 zoning on its west side and MU-2 along Broadway, and 4481 Broadway is zoned MU-2. According to the statement, city staff indicated during earlier coordination that BMS zoning looked like the best way to keep a three-story scale while meeting floodplain requirements. BMS would also allow a museum by right. The higher buildings come from where the creek sits, so the height question will likely shape most of the public discussion as the application moves toward a decision.
What the campus would put on the corner
The proposal calls for six buildings: five smaller mixed-use buildings plus the museum, which anchors the northern end. The program includes:
- 54 homes, mostly studios, one-bedrooms and multi-level units
- 22 artist studios, mostly on the ground floors of the residential buildings, where people walking by can see the work
- An Arts Square of about 5,800 square feet, plus courtyards, gardens and an east-west paseo running from Broadway into the campus
- Buildings 4 and 5 on the Broadway edge, with food and beverage, retail and service businesses that open both to the street and to the paseo
- A museum café
Inside, BMoCA's plans call for five exhibition spaces, two classrooms, an event and education space, a shop, a lobby and offices.
The design team is named in the filing. SO-IL is the design architect, Coburn Architecture is the architect of record, Civitas leads landscape architecture, Sanitas Group handles civil engineering, and Trestle Strategy Group runs outreach and city approvals. The neighbors listed in the filing place the site among Ponderosa Mobile Home Community and new Habitat for Humanity homes to the west, Shining Mountain Waldorf School and the Violla Townhomes under construction to the south, and Violet on Broadway Apartments and the North Boulder Public Library to the east.
Funding is still in progress. As of BMoCA's July 2026 update, the museum had raised $13.6 million toward a $25 million campaign, or 54%. The same July update announced a $1.5 million award to the museum from the Colorado Community Revitalization Tax Credit program. BMoCA's current home is at 1750 13th Street downtown. The museum has not said publicly what will happen to that location after the move.
The arts district the campus says it is joining
The filing calls this corner the southern gateway to the NoBo Arts District and describes the district as already established:
"An established district of more than 125 creatives, galleries, studios and monthly First Friday programming — the context the campus joins rather than replaces."
That language comes from the developer's written statement to the city.
You can see that district a short walk north of the future campus on the next two First Fridays. The Boulder County Arts Alliance lists the free NoBo First Friday Art Walk for November 6 and December 4, 2026, from 6 to 9 p.m., centered at NoBo Center for the Arts, 4929 Broadway #E. The listing includes open studios, galleries, live music and artist demos. On December 4, The Crowd Collective at 4939 Broadway opens its resident artists' studios and hosts the second release of its annual Small Originals show, with music and food.
The next official step at Broadway and Violet is the city's Site Review, which the developer expects to be approved in May 2027. Updates will appear under case LUR2026-00068 and on the developer's project page.
A project like this changes how a whole stretch of Broadway reads, from what fronts the street to what ends up next door. Marybeth Emerson follows entitlement filings like LUR2026-00068 closely, and she brings both development experience and a designer's eye to what they mean for nearby properties. If you own near Broadway and Violet and want a clear read on how the Creative Campus timeline relates to your own plans, schedule a consultation.
