Life, as President John Kennedy once pointed out, is unfair. That’s why Donald Trump is rich, Paris Hilton is famous, and credit card companies never forget how much you owe. And that’s why, despite the blundering that has characterized the city’s attempt to keep the U.S. Olympic Committee in town, the architects of the near-disaster won’t take the fall - because the USOC’s staying put, no matter what.

As a source close to the USOC (whom I’m not going to name, so don’t bother to ask) pointed out this morning that the organization really doesn’t have many options.

Chicago might seem attractive if it is awarded the 2016 games come October, but the USOC brass would find itself playing second fiddle to the Chicago Olympic Organizing Committee.

The USOC would be sharing space with the COOC, engaging in turf wars which it would lose and being distracted from its core mission.

Like the NFL, the USOC is not responsible for building and maintaining stadiums nor for the outcome of any particular game, but for maintaining the viability of the Olympic movement and Olympic brand.

In any case, the era of cities eagerly throwing money at sports-related nonprofits, as did Indianapolis with the NCAA, might have ended.

Local governments and economic development groups are strapped for cash, and might be more inclined to spend their money on projects with immediately quantifiable returns, rather than investing millions for bragging rights and prestige.

Not that the USOC wouldn’t be able to find a new home if the organization so chooses, but such a distraction would scarcely be welcome at this time. It’s got plenty to do this summer and fall preparing for the upcoming winter games, and doing everything it can to support the Chicago bid.

And according to reports from Chicago, interim CEO Stephanie Streeter is planning to move to the Springs in the near future, bringing her 18 month-old twin daughters. It seems unlikely that she’d uproot her family for a temporary move.

That, as much as anything tells me the USOC’s planning to stay.

And - just a thought - what happens if the Games go elsewhere, to Madrid or Tokyo or even to Rio de Janeiro? The last time an American city hosted the Summer Games was during 1996, in Atlanta, which was just 12 years removed from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympiad.

Miss out on 2016, and you can bet that heads will roll at the organization. Changing headquarters will be the least of their worries.

The sticking point remains the $16 million that was promised by LandCo for athlete housing and improvements on the Olympic Training Center campus.

My guess is that some face-saving deal is presently being worked out, whereby the city and El Pomar Foundation will jointly make commitments and pay for the OTC improvements during the next three or four years.

So, be prepared for a triumphal press conference, wherein the players in this drama praise themselves - despite the comedy of errors, pronounce the deal done, shake hands and take a few shots at the media for daring to question such wise, dedicated and civic-minded leaders.

Who knows, we might not have to wait very long.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 29th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog

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Here’s what the venerable, if seldom venerated, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter said upon the occasion of changing his party affiliation.

“Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”

Gotta hand it to ol’ Arlen - at least he’s honest about it.  He minimized the high-minded, principled rhetoric that most party switchers use to ennoble their switcheroo “The party moved away from me”, “I agonized over the decision for months”, “I regret the pain my decision must cost to some of my dearest friends [here a tear appears]“, and, of course “I will never abandon the principles that have guided my political career!”

Specter understands the first principle of politics, which the colorful Leadville Republican Ken Chlouber once summarized after I’d finished telling him about all the great things I was going to do when I was elected to whatever i was running for at the time.

“That’s fine, John,” he said, “But if you don’t git elected, then you don’t git to govern.”

Alas, every pol has to leave office eventually. FDR died, Churchill got tossed out by the voters, and Reagan retired.  Willie Sutton robbed banks “because that’s where the money is,” and Arlen Specter, in the same admirable spirit, has become a Democrat because that’s where the votes are.

And Ken Chlouber?  A few years back, he thought about running for Governor.  An ardent burro racer ( a sport wherein you and your beast run 10 or 15 miles through the mountains, seeking to beat other man/beast teams), Chlouber toured his home district with his faithful burro, dressed as if to race.

He quit the race after a few weeks, but not before a prominent Denver political consultant had offered him some unsolicited advice.

1) Lose the donkey.

2) Wear long pants.

Good advice for any aspiring pol - but if I were Specter, I’d call up Ken & borrow a burro.

Good for party identification-right, Senator?

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 28th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Blog

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Found myself-not unexpectedly-up in Cripple Creek last weekend, trying my luck at various infernal gambling devices, which, more often than not, taketh rather than giveth. 

My significant other and I spent most of the afternoon at Bronco Billy’s, which started out small when it was established more than 15 years ago, and has expanded, thrived and prospered  as the years have gone by.

Most of the casinos that sprung up in the months after gambling was first legalized during 1991 in the three mountain towns of Central City, Blackhawk, and Cripple Creek have long since disappeared. They’ve rolled through bankruptcy, merged, or have simply gone out of business. 

Contrary to the popular belief that owning a casino is like owning a piece of the Denver mint, the gaming business is risky and volatile. You’re at the mercy of government regulators, of ruthless, better-funded competitors, and of the constantly changing tastes of your customers.  Just as restaurants must tinker with their menus, remodel, and re-invent themselves, so too must casinos introduce new games, offer interesting competitions and constantly assess their markets.

Like restaurants, casinos are mainly in the business of offering customers a product that they can easily get elsewhere, so customer service is paramount.  And good customer service=superb employees=empathetic, customer-centric management.

After we’d played for a couple of hours and were -mirabile dictu!- ahead, we adjourned to the on-premise steakhouse for a meal.  We visit Bronco’s often enough to know most of the employees, but for a moment we didn’t recognize the servers preparing tableside guacamole for an adjacent table.

We should have known-it was one of the casino’s owners, Marc Murphy. 

Chatting with him, and his partner Mike Chaput a little later, Murphy was amused at our surprise.

“Mike and I spend several hours every Saturday night just walking around, helping here and there-and I’ll tell you, making guacamole is one of the most pleasurable things we do.”

That’s the way you’re supposed to manage, isn’t it?  And that’s the way that all successful businesses are run-with hands-on, continually involved managers who love what they do, what their employees do, and are dedicated to pleasing their customers.  You don’t learn those skills at business school-you just do them every day, every week, and every year.

And with a little bit luck, your business, like Marc & Mike’s, will still be around 17 years hence.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 28th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Bronco Billy's, Cripple Creek, Gaming

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As you may know I spent last week vacationing in Madrid.

Both the Spanish capital and the Windy City are finalists in the competition to host the 2016 Olympics, together with Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro. The winner will be announced Oct. 3rd - and this is one Olympic competition in which there is only a gold medal.  The runners-up go home, with empty hands, shattered dreams, and millions spent in search of illusory glory.

I don’t know what factors the illustrious members of the IOC take into consideration when deciding upon a host city.  Infrastructure? History? Politics? How well the would-be hosts schmoozed and flattered the self-important nonentities who become big shots every four years?  Promised benefits, of whatever kind?  Ancient slights, or future favors?

Who knows?  We don’t, and their Olympian majesties aren’t about to tell us. 

But if mundane considerations such as airport adequacy come into play, Chicago is…well, let’s consider the words of Doug Moe, who coached the Nuggets when his weak, underachieving, and injured team, seeded 8th, were to face the mighty Lakers, seeded 1st.

Asked how he assessed his team’s chances in the series, Moe was blunt.

“We’ve got no shot,” he said, provoking howls of wrath from the NBA powers-that-be, which then as now brooked no deviation from the sportspeak party line, e.g. “We’re putting it all on the line, We have respect, but anything can happen, We’re professionals, and we know what to do, blah blah blah.”

But Moe was right.  The Nuggets were swept, and the Lakers cruised to the NBA title.

Based on two very recent experiences with Chicago’s O’Hare and Madrid’s gleaming new airpalace-I mean airport-Chicago isn’t even in the same league. If an airport can be still beautiful, as was Eero Saarinen’s 1950’s TWA building at New York’s Idlewild, Madrid passes that test.  It’s also clean, user-friendly, efficient, and sensibly engineered-especially for international arrivals and departures.

O’Hare, by comparison, is old, cramped, poorly designed, dirty, inefficient, and slow-especially for international arrivals and departures. Combine its inherent inefficiency with the callous bureacracies which “serve” travellers-customs, immigration, the TSA-and you have a supremely miserable travel experience. 

How miserable?  Try this-we exited our Madrid-Chicago cattle car at 2:00 PM, with plenty of time, so we thought, to catch a flight to Denver at 4:30.  We missed the flight. 

But the Lords of the IOC will see none of it-they’ll be flying first class, met by retainers, and whisked away.  They’ll have a classic Potemkin village experience-shielded from the misery of the serfs. 

But for us, the Americans who might actually go to the Chicago games, none of that matters.  We’re used to the chaos and inefficiency of domestic air travel, and Chicago’s a lot closer, and a lot cheaper, than Madrid or Tokyo, especially by car.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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Wandering around the Spanish capital, it´s hard not to be envious.  Imagine a city that combines the best of Paris, New York, and Washington. Imagine a city of transcendent art and architecture, clean streets, functioning transit systems, a buoyant economy and spacious parks-a city whose lively streets are thronged with courteous, attractive, and clearly prosperous people. Imagine great shopping, fabulous restaurants, world-renowned bars…and stop imagining!  You can´t afford any of it!

But you can afford to walk and to look. As Yogi Berra once said,”You can see a lot just by observing.”

Observation: if print media are dying, the reports of their demise are greatly exaggerated (to quote Mark Twain). Walking from our modest hotel to the Prado, we passed at least five newspaper kiosks.  Each one carried approximately 40 different newspapers, including multiple English language papers.  At one such kiosk, I counted 11,including the NYT, the WSJ, the Financial Times, the NY Herald Tribune. Not cheap, though-the Herald Tribune set me back four bucks.

Observation: Is the global economy linked? Do the Spanish care about Colorado?  This morning´s “El Pais”, the Spanish national daily, carried a story about several companies, notably Iberdola, which expect to profit from infrastructure investment in the US. The pic that accompanied the story was of Iberdola´s 3,000 megawatt wind farm in Colorado.

An Iberdola official, Ramon de Miguel, was quoted as saying that the US market is very large and very compettive, but he sees potential for growth in the country´s electrical network.

“It is very old,” he said Änd Obama wants to replace the whole thing.”

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 22nd, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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American dollars! There was once a time, boys and girls, when everyone in the world wanted them. Unlike everyone else’s dicey, unstable currency, featuring crumpled bills of bizarrely large denominations (100,000 lira, 20,000 forints, 500 rubles) which might buy a beer and a pack of cigarettes, dollars were solid, predictable, and immutable. Other countries had pictures of mustachioed dictators on their bills, but not us. Our featured genuinely great men who had created, nurtured, and defended our American democracy. Washington, Lincoln, Jackson, Franklin-and we knew, as we proudly spent our ever-coveted dollars in foreign lands, that they’d be proud of the country that had chosen to so honor them. Things change.

In a Spanish tourist town (Marbella), dollars are not exactly sought after-quite the opposite. Every business offered payment in dollars had the same response-we don’t take ‘em. They don’t even offer you a lousy exchange rate-they just don’t accept dollars, period. Like the unfortunate citizens of Zimbabwe, or Argentina, or any of a dozen countries afflicted with hyperinflation and/or feckless governments, we’re pariahs.

So you scramble. You use ATMs, you beg at banks, you go to the moneychangers, and gratefully accept what they offer. Welcome to a new world, where the American dollar is just a green piece of paper, and Americans are, like Icelanders, just people who had everything going for them…and blew it.

Maybe we need to rename our country-shall we call it CitiLand? Or Greenspanistan?

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Posted by Rob Larimer on April 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Blog

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I’m on a little to vacation in Spain this week.Transatlantic flights are, unless you’re a CEO flying on the company dime, uncomfortable, dismaying, inconvenient, and expensive.

Flying from Chicago to Madrid in what can only be called supereconomy class (narrow seats, back of the plane all night, no sleep) puts you in a strange state that only, perhaps, those who have lived through the 60’s can fully appreciate.

The clocks here in Madrid say it’s 8 A.M., but it’s really 1 A.M. as far as I’m concerned.

Here it is - an airport so modern, so spacious, so-I don’t know, so 21st Century-that it makes DIA look like a collection of quonset huts. And to compare it to O’Hare is like comparing a Ferrari to a Chevy Vega.

And, Madrid isn’t atypical.

Airports throughout Europe are clean, modern, convenient, and new - the product of the furious infrastructure investment that has taken place during the last 15 years on this ancient continent. And what did we do during the same period? Argued, consumed, and paid a few thousand bankers tens of billions to destroy the world economy.

In Colorado, we did our part to invest in airports-look at DIA and our ten year old terminal in Colorado Springs. But in the rest of the country? JFK, O’Hare, Dallas-we’ve scarcely entered the last quarter of the 20th century, let alone the 21st.

But maybe we should just forget about these big, modern, uncomfortable jets and go back to DC-6’s. Slow, comfortable, propeller-driven, stopping in Iceland overnight to refuel…now that’s my kind of geezer flying!

And we could just land ‘em on dirt strips somewhere, and hike to our destinations.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 16th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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aren’t exactly everywhere, but here’s a hopeful little story.

Spent some time chatting with Wayne Jennings a few days ago, who with his spouse, Sylvia, owns a storefront Re/Max office on Tejon Street – a few steps from the CSBJ office. 

“We’re very happy with the location,” Wayne told me, “Until a Keller Williams office moved in on a side street, we were the only downtown storefront Realtors-and we’re still the only one on Tejon Street.  One day last week we had five walk-ins.  You never get that in a typical real estate brokerage-people don’t just walk in to a random office building and look for a Realtor.  And that’s given us a lot of business-a few months ago, an Army helicopter pilot who’s relocating to Fort Carson walked in, we showed him some houses, he bought one, and subsequently two of his fellow pilots bought from us as well.  They all bought on the same street.  They all married Korean women when they were stationed in Korea, all the families are close, and we were delighted to be able to help them -nice people. And I’ll tell you about military buyers: they know how to make a decision!”

Sound like a real estate broker’s dream, doesn’t it?  Wayne’s story also makes it clear that, despite all the challenges, there’s still business to be had for those of us who work hard, are creative in selling our services, and invent new ways to find potential customers. 

Not to mention the fact that downtown, where Colorado Springs residents have done business since 1871, is not just lively and interesting, but a place where new businesses can grow and thrive.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 9th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: downtown, Keller Williams, ReMax, Tejon Street, Wayne & Sylvia Jennings

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Got your attention, didn’t I?

But it’s true - sort of.  Chatting with a few councilmembers this morning, we found that City Council, aided by thus far unnamed, prominent and, most importantly, solvent members of our community, are furiously working to restructure the U.S. Olympic Committee/city/LandCo deal.

The key to the restructuring: a new financing package from a “major bank,” thus far also officially unnamed.

Like all “major banks,” this one is only liquid (not to mention solvent) because of the government’s injection of funds (OK, OK, that’s “taxpayer dollars” for all you unreconstructed right-wingers out there) into the banking system.

So the path is clear - it’s not Tinker to Evers to Chance but Taxpayer to Banks to (new) Developer to USOC.  Not a mere double play, but a triple play!

According to our sources, Ray Marshall and the city were in urgent talks during the weekend.  Purpose: to make Marshall’s lawsuit go away, and either replace him with another developer, or make him the junior partner in a newly created entity that will take over LandCo’s contractual responsibilities.

The key to the deal is simple, even elegant: who wants to put up $16 million for the agreed-upon improvements to the Olympic Training Center?

Absent a big, fat loan from a big, fat bank, the city will have cough up the dough right away, instead of working out a complex deal that might shift much of the burden to other deal participants (the state, the Downtown Development Authority, El Pomar Foundation, etc.).

If it works out, it’s only because of TARP, which has loosened the purse strings of all those big, fat banks - that’s right, the ones that paid big, fat bonuses to the big, fat CEOs who earned them by … oh, never mind.

Give council credit - they’re doing their best to keep the deal from blowing up, after being blindsided by the news of Marshall’s financial/legal difficulties.  It’s easy to blame our elected officials for being asleep at the wheel, but let’s be clear: they were ill-served by both the city attorney and the city administration.

So far, council has taken the position that the original deal, however flawed, would have worked out if the economy hadn’t gone south.  Maybe - but even a year ago, when the deal was first inked, many in the development community scornfully dismissed it as unworkable.  And as Marshall’s well-documented financial and legal problems multiplied, no one in either office gave council a heads-up.

Will heads roll?  We’ll see - but any such reckoning will have to come after a successful restructuring.  And when that happens, there might be a quiet resignation or two.

But in the happy event of a new and doable deal, don’t expect council to pass a resolution of appreciation thanking the folks who made it possible- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and President Barack Obama.

I’m sure they’d appreciate it …

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 6th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog

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This is one of many versions of an ancient Indian tale, which came to my mind this week.Each day, for many years, a beggar appears before the king. Without speaking, he gives the king a piece of fruit, which the king never acknowledges, but simply throws away. One day, the king gives the fruit to a pet monkey, who bites into it and reveals a gleaming jewel. Curious about the other pieces of fruit, the King investigates and discovers that they have all been tossed through a window into a locked chamber in his treasury. When he enters the room, he finds only rotten fruit-the gems have disappeared.

The beggar’s gift? The day itself - fleeting, precious, and as perishable as the freshly-picked fruit. The king, distracted by the affairs of his kingdom, threw away the greatest gift of all - to live in joy in our radiant, imperfect world.

Earlier this week, Springs artist Timber Kirwan ended his own life. He was gentle and sweet-tempered, a gifted artist, a man rich in friends, who seemed to float serenely through life’s turmoil. A memorial site was created on FaceBook, which hundreds have joined. His friends remembered the richness of his life, not the darkness which consumed him.

The day of his passing, a friend called to ask whether I knew a good art restoration person. Barbara Webb (Bobbie to her friends and family) had a family portrait which needed cleaning. I gave her a name, and we talked about her many projects, and about returning to Grace Episcopal on Palm Sunday after two years in exile. Bobbie was excited and busy, living in the moment and, with the sunny optimism that has always characterized her, anticipating the delights of days yet to come.

Bobbie is in her 94th year.

How many days did Timber throw away, overtaken by despair? And how fortunate are we who still live and can treasure each day!

So this Sunday, when I once again enter the church where, so many years ago, my parents were the first couple to be married beneath its soaring vaults, I’ll say a prayer for Timber, and offer thanks for the day itself.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on April 3rd, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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