@lmajano OK, I have found the issue. Enabling this setting in dev is the culprit:
wireBox.singletonReload = true;
To replicate, create a new app: coldbox create app-wizard name=myApp using the default skeleton and dump the Renderer in Main.index:
dump( var=getInstance( "Renderer@coldbox" ), top=3 );
If you add the singletonReload setting to dev and reinit, the above dump shows all NULL values.