In 2006, Colorado passed legislation enabling public entities to accept unsolicited proposals for public-private partnerships (P3) to develop and operate public infrastructure. That same year the Northwest Parkway Public Highway Authority received an unsolicited offer from Northwest Parkway LLC to take over the operation of the toll road. The consortium was made up of Brisa, a privatized Portuguese toll road developer, and CCR Group, a Brazilian toll road operator. Northwest Parkway LLC proposed maintaining the toll road in exchange for the right to retain toll proceeds under a long-term lease agreement for 99 years. The Authority's financial adviser RBC Dain Rauscher encouraged the organization to consider a lease of the Parkway to the private operator as a means to pay off its underlying debt.
Northwest Parkway LLC saw the toll road as a valuable investment for several reasons. Although the Parkway's traffic levels were below forecasts, the doubling of the facility's revenues between 2004 and 2006 was promising. The firm believed that traffic volumes on the facility would likely increase significantly in the coming decades as the population of the greater Denver region continued to grow. While the consortium might lose money in the early years of the concession, Brisa and CCR believed that the toll road would be profitable as time progressed, especially if the orbital route around Denver, of which the Northwest Parkway is a part, were completed. In addition, Brisa and CCR were eager to establish a presence in the United States and bolster their credentials, helping them to win larger projects in the future-possibly including the completion of the Denver Beltway.