Tourism act takes a dramatic turn
Commissioners scrambling to bridge gaps in assistance for big projects
Among Colorado’s economic development incentive programs, the Regional Tourism Act has always offered high drama. It didn’t disappoint on Thursday.
Denver received millions less than it asked for under the RTA after the Colorado Economic Development Commission found itself backed into a corner it couldn’t escape.
And a group of four northern Colorado tourism projects, worried the state was trying to control them like puppets on a string, came close to getting voted down after they tried to take a stand.
Denver, which is working on a $1.1 billion revamp of the National Western complex and the surrounding neighborhood, asked the state for $128 million in rebates of future state sales tax revenues tied to new out-ofstate visits.
But Economic & Planning Systems, an independent analyst, calculated the project should get closer to $81 million, leaving commissioners scrambling for a way to bridge the gap.
Two years ago the state legislature, concerned the EDC was playing loose with taxpayer money, limited RTA awards to no more than 50 percent above the third-party recommendation without a unanimous vote by the commission.
With one commissioner absent and two others unable to vote because of potential
conflicts of interest, that wasn’t going to happen.
The National Western Center won approval for $121.5 million, which will add $6.5 million to the $197 million funding shortfall the city already faced.
“It just makes the gap that much bigger,” said Cary Kennedy, Denver’s chief financial officer. Denver later thanked the state for the incentives in a statement, allaying fears the city might go after the commission for going with a strict interpretation of “unanimous.”
Things got especially heated when incentives for an indoor whitewater park, a horror film center, a highend lake resort and water park-themed hotel in Larimer and Weld counties came up.
The four projects, known as Go NoCO, had asked for $86.1 million in RTA support, while the outside analyst recommended only $61.6 million.
The EDC had the votes to give Go NoCO what it wanted dollar-wise, but refused to budge on a long list of “guardrails” the state’s economic development director Fiona Arnold and her staff laid out to make sure the projects were unique.
“That kind of specificity is untenable,” balked Go NoCO chairman Patrick Brady. He argued the guardrails were so detailed they could complicate, if not wreck, efforts to raise money.
The proposed Peligrande Resort in Windsor, for example, must include what would be only the second Boathouse restaurant in the country and meet minimum footage requirement on things such as the ballroom.
John Cullen, owner of the Stanley Hotel, which is developing a horror film center, questioned a requirement the center contain enough digital capacity to store the country’s largest film collection.
Cullen argued the request should have said “horror” film archive, given there was no way the center could ever compete with the storage capacity of Amazon or Google.
Windsor officials also are worried about a requirement that local sales tax revenues the resort generates be returned as local incentives, given an earlier vote committing some of those revenues elsewhere.
The dissent forced the EDC into an executive session to discuss whether it could approve tourism incentives without the guardrails.
EDC chairman Dick Monfort warned Go NoCO that there could be no approval without an acceptance of the requirements, while reassuring that sticking points could be ironed out in contract negotiations over the next four months.
With the final curtain on the RTA set to come down in three weeks, time was short to win an approval. RTA’s authority to approve new projects ends Dec. 31.
“We have to make sure the project comes in as you describe them,” Monfort said.
Brady seemed on the verge of refusing, before the group reversed course and accepted the requirements in principle if not precise detail.
In other votes, the commission approved $300,000 in state strategic funds to German airline Lufthansa for marketing costs associated with the relaunch of a nonstop flight from Denver to Munich.
Two grants for $1.8 million under the state’s job growth incentive tax credit were approved for employers looking to bring 75 jobs to Jefferson County and 56 jobs to either Adams County or Weld County.
And an Advanced Industries Accelerator grant of $2.5 million was approved for a 3-D metal printing program at the Colorado School of Mines.
Lockheed Martin, Ball Aerospace and Fauston Tool are providing more than $5 million in private support to the program to meet a 2-to-1 match requirement.