First Look At Denver Broncos Locker Room Makeover
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (CBS4)- The Super Bowl Champions are getting a fresh start to the season thanks to a locker room renovation at Denver Broncos headquarters. The new look is designed to bring the team closer.
"We've always done that. The layout of where we're at, it's similar to where they were before. The biggest thing we wanted to accomplish in this locker room was to open it up. We had some permanent lockers in the middle that kind of separated offense and defense a little more. Now with the open concept here, all the guys can see across the locker room and feel like it's one full team in the locker room. When our roster size increases here and we have our temporary lockers down the middle, there will still be a little bit of separation there. During the actual regular season, it will be much nicer in here," said Denver Broncos Vice President of Operations Chip Conway.
The locker room features an open look with wide spaces where the players can walk around and talk to one another after practice.
"I think everyone likes it. We tried to match the finishes with some other facility renovations that we've done in the last two years. It's a new look. We've had maple [lockers] in here since 2005, so when they walked in I think it was a pretty drastic difference for them. The hard surfaces with the granite on the bottom and the leather seats are a lot better than the carpet they were sitting on before. We made it a little bit more functional with USB port power and regular power outlets in each locker so the guys can charge their phones and iPads and all their toys that they bring in here. Then the drawers, it's a big improvement from having a little lift top. They can pull those out and store as many shoes as they want. We're giving them a little bit more cubby space, so they can kind of separate things and hopefully keep it a little bit cleaner than they had in the past," said Conway.
The locker room makeover is in line with recent renovations at Broncos headquarters.
"Mr. Bowlen, Joe Ellis and John Elway, they give me a lot of leeway. It's almost a 30-year-old building. Being able to see this facility age and see where things need to be improved, I think there are two areas that we really haven't touched: our team meeting room and our training room. Our training room we've touched a little bit, but we have some improvements that hopefully we can get done in the not-so-distant [future] in there," said Conway.
The improvements don't change the size of the locker room but make it seem that way because of the way the makeover was completed.
"Structurally, it really didn't change size-wise. We really didn't blow out any walls. We changed some entrances. We lost an entrance into the training room and we maneuvered the player entrances on the north and south ends so they're a little more strategic so we can get more lockers in here. We shrunk the lockers down by about two inches, which I don't think the players can really tell that we shrunk them down that much. I think we gained six more permanent lockers in here and we'll be able to put 22 temps in here—so a grand total of 96 lockers. It's the same distance. It looks bigger," said Conway. "We opened up the ceiling. We got six more inches of height up there, but we added these colorful ceiling clouds in here to kind of add a little splash of color. We added a few more TVs. We've got some message boards that are going to be arriving here in. I think the lighting in here as we were talking about was poor. If any of you guys had been in here, it was dark, so we actually hired a lighting engineer for this project to make this a lot nicer for the guys as hopefully you guys who are in here filming."
