“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Anatole France, Le Lys Rouge, 1894

Go on the library’s website (ppld.org), search for the earliest photograph of Colorado Springs, and what do you see? It’s a grainy photograph of downtown Colorado Springs during 1871, when there was no Colorado Springs. There are a few rough wooden shacks, and a handful shabbily dressed, bearded men skulking about.

Now, 140 years later, go to that location which is now the intersection of Pikes Peak and Cascade. Walk several hundred yards to the southwest to the banks of Fountain Creek, and what do you see?

You see a few bearded, shabbily dressed men standing around an encampment consisting of a few tents and some rough wooden shacks.

140 years ago: courageous pioneers extend the frontier!!

Today: shiftless freeloaders pollute the creek, thumb their noses at authority and offend us with their all-too-visible poverty!

One wonders whether the official dismay at the “homeless situation” isn’t rooted in the refusal of the creekside campers to be humble, law-abiding and invisible.

Think about it. If you were down-and-out, broke, homeless and scorned by polite society, would you like to sleep in a coldly regulated shelter, get tossed out every morning at 7 a.m. and wander the streets for the rest of the day? Or would you rather pitch a tent beside the creek, sleep when you please, drink cheap vodka, cadge a few bucks from soft-hearted motorists and eat for free at Marian House?

What official Colorado Springs most dislikes about the tent cities (actually, they’re more like tent villages) is that they’re so outlandishly visible, an ever-present reminder that some of us are afflicted by terrible poverty. Shouldn’t they just go somewhere else?

Here are some suggestions.

- Let’s turn the tent cities into tourist attractions, like Rock Ledge Ranch. These folks aren’t homeless - they’re re-enacting our early history!

- Let’s cash in on our investment in the USOC and move ‘em all into the now-vacant bottom floors of the USOC building at 27 South Tejon!

-And finally, let’s take up Broadmoor CEO Steve Bartolin on his offer to help the city deal with its multiple financial crises and transport the camps to the Broadmoor Golf Course. Steve would be delighted - so much so that we should just make it a surprise, and let him wake up one morning to a field of colorful tents where once there was a drab green fairway.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on January 19th, 2010 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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I never thought of the ever-amiable Rep. Larry Liston as a particular friend of the lobbyists who helpfully swarm the state Capitol when the legislature is in session, but he’s asking his colleagues to extend them a hand.
He’s introduced a bill (HB 1092), which, according to a summary posted on the legislature’s website “authorizes security personnel at the state capitol building, including the Colorado state patrol, to allow a lobbyist with a lobbyist identification card to enter the capitol building without submitting to a search of his or her person or property by security personnel, electronic weapons screening devices, or other means.”
Larry, you’re a nice guy, and most of the lobbyists I know are fine folks - but have you thought this over?
Suppose you get a text message from a lobbyist as a bill approaches passage, reminding you that he/she is watching, armed and ready to take immediate action unless you change your vote right now! Maybe she’s joking - but on the other hand, unsearched, possibly armed lobbyists might enliven the dull days ahead at the Capitol.
No more boring debates - just shoot-outs between AARP gunsels and their counterparts in the insurance industry. Now I understand - you’re just trying to bring back Colorado’s colorful history!

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on January 14th, 2010 :: Filed under Uncategorized
Tags :: General Assembly, lobbyists, Rep. Larry Liston

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Our own Colorado Springs homeboy, Attorney General John Suthers, penned an eminently sensible op-ed column yesterday regarding the so-called ‘Nebraska Compromise.’

For those of you who ignored the nasty horse-trading that Senate majority leader Harry Reid had to do to get 60 votes for the health care bill, the ‘Nebraska Compromise’ is better described as the ‘Nelson Bribe.’

Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, whose talents may be better suited to the World Poker Tour than to the mundane work of the United States Senate, refused to be the 60th vote unless a particularly noisome, Nebraska-friendly provision was inserted into the bill.

As Suthers pointed out, this sweet little morsel of permanent pork exempted Nebraska, alone among the 50 states, “from any additional(Medicaid) burden and requires that the other 49 states absorb the cost of covering any new Nebraska Medicaid recipients.”

Suthers couches his criticism of this absolutely outrageous maneuver in polite, lawyerly terms-but you don’t have to be admitted to the bar (and no, I don’t mean Tony’s) to realize that the deal stinks.

This isn’t just business as usual-this is, as Suthers notes, both egregiously unfair and almost certainly unconstitutional.

If cunning lawmakers can exempt their states from federal mandates, to the detriment of their peers, I’ve got an agenda for Senators Bennet and Udall!

For starters, why should Coloradans pay income taxes? And why should we pay inheritance taxes? And why shouldn’t the post office deliver mail without charge, and stay open on Sundays? And shouldn’t we all have free universal health care? And what about Social Security? Coloradans should be able to collect $5,000 per month starting at age 40, regardless of earnings history-thus enabling us to take better advantage of our state’s magnificent recreational opportunities, without having to spend our most productive years chained to our desks!

Now that I think about it, Suthers lacks Nelson’s daring vision. Rather than criticize this great Nebraska statesman (I’ll bet that’s the first time anyone has written that particular phrase), we should emulate him.

Senator Bennet, Senator Udall, your constituents are waiting. You might start by overturning the results of yesterday’s lamentable excuse for a football game, by introducing legislation barring teams from scoring more than 14 points when playing against the Broncos. Now that’d be a start-and I’m sure that Senator Nelson would support you. Of course, you might have to insert a phrase barring teams from scoring any points at all against the Cornhuskers-but hey, compromise is the name of the game, isn’t it?

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on January 4th, 2010 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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The Gazette has abandoned its ambitious plans to publish its FreshInk as a four-day per week free tabloid newspaper and instead has relegated it to a once-a-week insert.

FreshInk, launched during April of this year, was the brainchild of Gazette publisher Steve Pope, who reportedly told his staff at the time that FreshInk was intended to both compete with the Colorado Springs Independent for younger readers and to eventually become a zoned publication available throughout the region.

At the time, some speculated that Pope had created FreshInk specifically as an Independent-killer, in revenge for that paper’s revelations concerning his fudged resume when he first joined the Gazette.

But I don’t think that was ever the plan - the Gazette, like many floundering dailies, was struggling with the recession and with a swiftly changing business environment.

The Gazette’s parent, now-bankrupt Freedom Communications, had tried the same strategy with its publication in Mesa, Arizona, the East Valley Tribune. The strategy didn’t work, and Freedom announced plans to close the paper unless a buyer could be found. Apparently, there’s a buyer in the wings, and freedom has deferred plans for shutting the pub down pending the bankruptcy court’s approval of the proposed deal.

When launched, FreshInk was published with racked distribution throughout Manitou, the west side, and downtown Colorado Springs. During July, a zoned edition of the paper began distribution in Fountain.

But, it appeared that few businesses chose to advertise in FreshInk.

The paper had formidable competitors, including the Independent and the West Side Pioneer, Ken Jordan’s feisty neighborhood weekly, which routinely scoops every other news medium in the city.

During the last two months, FreshInkhad shrunk from 16 pages to 12, and most ads were so-called ‘house ads’, for which little or no compensation was received. And two weeks ago, the paper announced that it would henceforth be available three days weekly, rather than four.

In a curiously-worded announcement in the Gazette yesterday morning, FreshInk editor Tim Bergsten announced that “changes are coming to the Gazette’s citizen journalism platform…it’s natural to shy away from change, to assume that it’s going to be bad.”

“Beginning Jan. 6,” Bergsten continued, “FreshInk will print Wednesdays. On Feb. 3 we’ll launch two more neighborhood papers (serving the Powers Boulevard and Briargate areas). All four neighborhood papers will be delivered in the Gazette to home subscribers.”

In retrospect, it’s easy to say that FreshInk was doomed from day one, a bad idea that somehow implanted itself in the mind of a stubborn boss.

Maybe so - but it takes a certain amount of journalistic chutzpah to launch a print pub of any kind in today’s market, and FreshInk was often interesting and readable. Many observers believe that metro dailies are a dying breed, doomed to follow passenger pigeons and passenger trains into extinction - so I applaud the Gazette for at least trying something, rather than passively accepting what fate may bring.

“Stand by,” Liz Cobb, the Gazette’s Vice President of Marketing said, “More changes are coming.”

And change, if inevitable, is not always good.

When ‘The City of New Orleans’ immortalized passenger rail 40 years ago, Colorado Springs had two competing dailies, as did Denver, as did San Francisco, as did Seattle. America’s network of passenger trains had largely disappeared, leaving only a few faded reminders of a glorious past. Trains were made for songwriters - and newspapers are made by writers.

I suspect that dozens of laid-off journalists are banging away at their keyboards as I write this, hoping to write the book that will define and celebrate the end of journalism as we knew and lived it.

Good luck. And I know you’ve given up on fortune - but don’t expect fame either. Here’s the chorus from ‘The City of New Orleans’, which was written not by Arlo Guthrie, not by Willie Nelson…but by Steve Goodman.

“Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home, we’ll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea.
And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain’t heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues.”

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
Tags :: Freedom Communications, FreshInk, Gazette

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There’s something about earnest, cheerful, inclusive, well-meaning and uplifting community projects that brings out the Sheridan Whiteside in me.

Sheridan Whiteside was the protagonist of Moss Hart’s and George S. Kaufman’s 1939 comedy “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”

Whiteside, who was modeled on the famously acerbic theater critic Alexander Woollcott, had one of the most memorable opening lines in the history of American theater.

“I may vomit,” he said.

In that spirit, here’s an excerpt from the request for proposals for an “inclusive, creative community activity.”

“Art Creates Community is a call to the entire Pikes Peak region to have a direct vote in creating an inclusive, creative community activity in 2010. Bee Vradenburg Foundation and Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado are teaming together to let citizens vote online for one arts project that will be awarded a $10,000 grant…
Ideal projects will be surprising, fun, creative, accessible and inclusive. A project could be a one‐day festival, a series of small events over several dates, the installation of a permanent piece of public art or mural, The project may be an existing event, festival, etc., but applicants must demonstrate what will be new, inclusive and “community building” with the project in 2010.”

I know what will happen.

There will be dozens of feel good proposals, and the sentimental fools who reside in the Pikes Peak region will choose the sappiest one available. Artists and arts organizations, knowing this, will tailor their submissions accordingly.

• How ‘bout 20,000 rainbow balloons, to be launched by 20,000 schoolchildren, each with a message of peace, love, and the brotherhood/sisterhood of all people??!!
• Or maybe a great big purple dinosaur that will show up inclusively where you most expect it, making adults smile and children shriek with joy??!!
• Maybe a big beautiful mural depicting a giant purple dinosaur and thousands if kids on a flower-strewn hillside releasing rainbow balloons with messages of peace, love, joy, inclusion and…oh, never mind!

But enough of curmudgeonly cynicism! Rather than rail at the well-meaning efforts of my betters, here’s my entry,

Project: the Tejon Street Gateway Arch.
Project concept: Downtown lacks a ceremonial, inclusive, and welcoming entry. The proposed sculpture/arch will fill this void with an appropriate structure which will bring our city national and international renown.
Project description: A parabolic arch, soaring over Tejon Street at Platte Avenue, to be constructed of cor-ten steel, a durable, unsightly, and maintenance-free material. On the north side of the arch, an ingenious dual system of illumination will send an appropriate message to travelers at all hours of night and day. By night, gas jets will spell out in letters of fire the same message that glowing red neon tubes will deliver by day: “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.”

Many will recognize these words which, according to Dante’s Inferno (Canto 3, verse 3) are inscribed on the gates of Hell.

The rainbow balloon folks may not like it, but they’ll have to admit that this entry meets all stated criteria, and then some!

Inclusive? What could be more inclusive than Hell? Like Fannie Mae Duncan’s legendary Cotton Club, everyone’s welcome! The devil doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, age, gender, or sexual orientation-sin, and you’re in!

Accessible? Just read Dante, or the sermons of my great ancestor, Increase Mather, or go to church this Sunday-Hell is only too accessible!

Community Building? A not-so-gentle reminder of the transience of our lives on this mortal plane and the probable consequences of unrestrained partying on the Tejon Street strip should strengthen, not weaken, our regrettably sinful community. And for those of us who fail to mend our ways, it’ll be comforting to find a reminder of home as we begin our journey into eternal torment.

One minor problem does exist, though - the terms of the competition require that entrants be sponsored by, or partner with, a 501c(3) nonprofit.

I’m not sure that any local nonprofit would want to partner with such an infernal project, but I’m trying to get in contact with the head of a well-known international organization. His phone is unlisted, but he called the other day.

“Please allow me to introduce myself,” he said, “Just call me Lucifer - but what’s puzzling me is the nature of your game.”

I tried to explain, but he was uninterested. I asked how I could contact him - he just laughed.

“If you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse, or I’ll lay your soul to waste.”

As the caretaker of one of the six extant copies of Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon (given to Increase Mather by a man convicted of witchcraft in Salem during the 17th century), I could summon up Mr. Lucifer with ease.

But why bother? You know, I’ll bet that Mr. Lucifer doesn’t even have a 501c(3).

<-Back to CSBJ.com

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Posted by Rob Larimer on December 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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During the past 150 years, thousands of reporters have covered statehouses throughout the Mountain West.

They tend to be merry, cynical, and tough-minded men and women, used to dealing with fools, scoundrels, hypocrites and even the occasional selfless idealist.

In the old days, they seldom refused a drink, an opportunity for a good time, or a free meal. They were - and are - a fearless lot, unafraid of the brutish power brokers who would just as soon silence their voices.

Publishers distrusted them, because they took on the powerful and the unscrupulous in the shadowy no-man’s land of lobbyists, interest groups, and trade associations - and thereby infuriated advertisers. Their editors protected them, knowing that, as Mark Twain is supposed to have said, “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe when the legislature is in session.”

But after 150 years, many of these voices will be stilled.

The Gazette will no longer have a full-time reporter at the legislature, nor will the Pueblo Chieftain. That’s not just regrettable - it’s potentially catastrophic.

The legislature’s proceedings are about as transparent as, say, Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus logico-philisophicus” in the original Latin-if you don’t speak Latin.

Absent smart, skillful and perpetually alert reporters, it’s almost impossible to figure out what our elected representatives are up to.

A clever legislator can do the bidding of the powerful, and kill a popular bill while appearing to support it. Without statehouse reporters, serious debate-not that there’s much of it in the best of times-will vanish, to be replaced by lies, exaggerations, and the nastiest kind of partisan political maneuvering.

Grim times, indeed-and that’s why we need Mark Twain, who was one of the first, and certainly the best, statehouse reporter in our region’s history. During 1862-1868, he covered the Nevada legislature, and anything else that caught his fancy, for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.

He was a great reporter - and he knew how to have a good time. He would have been right at home in the Red Room, the Colfax Avenue establishment long favored by reporters, lobbyists, and legislators. Here’s his immodest account of one convivial evening during December of 1863, a ball and supper in Virginia City hosted by the Virginia City Eagle Engine Company.

A TIDE OF ELOQUENCE

“Afterwards, Mr. Mark Twain being enthusiastically called upon, arose, and without previous preparation, burst forth in a tide of eloquence so grand, so luminous, so beautiful and so resplendent with the gorgeous fires of genius, that the audience were spell-bound by the magic of his words, and gazed in silent wonder in each other’s faces as men who felt that they were listening to one gifted with inspiration [Applause.] The proceedings did not end here, but at this point we deemed it best to stop reporting and go to dissipating, as the dread solitude of our position as a sober, rational Christian, in the midst of the driveling and besotted multitude around us, had begun to shroud our spirits with a solemn sadness tinged with fear…”

“A solemn sadness tinged with fear.” That’s how we ought to view the disappearance of statehouse reporting. And what would Twain have done?

Listened to John Belushi, as Bluto in Animal House.

“My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.”

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 10th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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Peg Brickley’s blog on the Wall Street Journal’s Web site might be of interest to Colorado Springs residents.

Titled “Bankruptcy Beat,” it’s devoted to Springs resident Tim Hoiles, who reportedly cashed out his 8.6 percent stake in the family business, Freedom Communications, which owns the Gazette, for a cool $142 million. He’s sitting pretty - and that’s why unsecured creditors, including a lawyer he once employed, of the now-bankrupt company are snapping at his heels

Here’s a sample from the blog:

“If creditors of Freedom Communications are hoping to recoup “illegal dividends” from Timothy C. Hoiles, motorcycle aficionado, patron of the arts and ex-scold of the family who owns the company, good luck to them… Creditors haven’t named any names when it comes to insiders who could be tagged with lawsuits, and Hoiles cashed out years before the company filed for Chapter 11 protection in September.”

Click here to read the blog.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 9th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
Tags :: bankruptcy, Freedom Communications, Gazette, Tim Hoiles, Wall Street Journal

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Looks as if the JP Morgan Chase building at Pikes Peak and Tejon won’t be sitting forlornly on the market for $56 per square foot for too much longer. One of the bigger players in the local real estate market sent me this email:

“…coincidentally, I’m in the process of putting a group together to buy the Chase Building. We calculate that with all renovation costs, we can be in that deal for $100 psf, including new, underground parking…”

Sounds like a brilliant real estate play to me, since building new would cost between $250-300 psf. And a new downtown building wouldn’t have the location of the Chase Building, superbly situated on the northwest corner of Pikes Peak and Tejon.

Interestingly, that corner was home to the leading bank in the Pikes Peak region from 1874 until JP Morgan Chase vacated it a few days ago. During the Cripple Creek boom, the First National Bank erected a superb structure of stone quarried from Red Rocks (now city open space). The building was designed in imitation of one of the great Florentine palazzos.

The palazzo still stands-the bank building was torn down during the late 1950’s, and replaced by a strikingly ugly greenish pseudo-modernist hulk designed by a local architect whose name, in respect for the deceased (de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, after all!) I won’t mention.

During the early 90’s, the building was gutted, reskinned, and reborn as the present uninspired but inoffensive office building that some canny bottom-fisher will most likely acquire within the next few weeks.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 3rd, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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In Colorado Springs, commercial real estate markets move in predictable cycles. We get a decade or so of prosperity, as rents rise steadily and prices follow. 

New entrants flood into the markets, brokers show up for work, answer their phones, write offers, collect commissions and move on to the next deal. Owners cackle with glee as their net worth increases, tenants complain mildly as rents skyrocket - but not too much, because business is booming.  Let the good times roll!  Life is good!!

Until it isn’t. 

Every twenty years, a new generation of brokers and investors get inducted into the Hard Knocks School of Colorado Springs Real Estate. 

Businesses founder, rents plunge, banks foreclose, equity evaporates, and investors who find themselves miraculously solvent during market chaos are positioned to make money - lots of money.

Let’s consider the Chase Bank building at 6 N.Tejon, at what was once, and may still be, the city’s prime downtown corner. It’s priced at $7.25 million, or $56 per square foot.  It’ll need some updating to attract new tenants, and retain the cachet of a class A office building, which might add another $2.5 million or so to the price.

A new owner would then have, for a total investment of less than $10 million, a trophy downtown building.  When the local and national economies revive, whoever owns the building will see substantial appreciation.  Who knows?-it may even get back to its original 2007 asking price of $14 million.

Meanwhile, the city of Colorado Springs, apparently unaware of such investment opportunities, just paid $19 million and change for the top five floors of the building at 27 South Tejon, which the United States Olympic Committee will occupy next spring, as soon as G.E. Johnson completes $2 million + in tenant finish.   That’s a total of $265 per square foot, more than twice the PSF price for a renovated Chase Bank building.

Conclusion: someone is going to make a lot of money buying downtown real estate, but it won’t be the taxpayers.

As broker Andy Oyler (who’s listing the Chase Bank building with Grubb & Ellis/Quantum Commercial Group) said this morning, reflecting upon today’s challenging commercial real estate market, “It blows your mind how quickly markets change.”

True enough, Andy - but just wait for the upside move!

 

 

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 2nd, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
Tags :: 27 South Tejon, 6 north tejon, andy oyler, chase bank building, Colorado Springs, commercial real estate, G.E. Johnson, taxpayers

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A couple of hours ago, we noted in a previous blog that it would be appropriate for the USOC, as a gesture to the community, to contribute to the fundraising effort effort led by councilmember Sean Paige which is aimed at, among other things, keeping the municipal swimming pools open next summer.

Haven’t heard from the USOC yet, but there has been one wonderful response.  Here it is, in the form of an email to Paige, copied to us.

“Sean,

USA Swimming is one of the National Governing Bodies headquartered here in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center. As a non-profit organization that is primarily funded with membership dues from our athlete members, we are extremely careful about how we spend the money with which we are entrusted.  With that said, we still have over the years been an enthusiastic supporter and financial contributor to local community organizations, including: Colorado Springs Sports Corporation; Pikes Peak Urban League, UCCS, United Way, Swing High Playground Project for children with disabilities, and other entities.  We are not currently in a position to make a grand gesture to help with the effort to keep local swimming pools open, but if it will help ensure that pools can remain open USA Swimming can make a one-time contribution of $5,000 to the effort that you are leading (as noted in John Hazlehurst’s blog below).  If this small donation can be put to direct use toward helping to keep the local pools open, please let me know and we will expedite this contribution.

Thank you for your efforts on behalf of the community. 

Kind regards,

Chuck Wielgus

USA Swimming.”

This is a significant and important contribution.  As Chuck Wielgus Implies, the NGBs aren’t exactly swimming in money (bad pun!), and USA Swimming’s willingness to take the lead in this project is encouraging, heartening, and sets an example for all of us.  I’m as perennially broke as any journalist, but I’ll put my money where my blog is, and pony up $200.  Sean, what’s the next step?  And Chuck, thank you, thank you, thank you!  As a kid, I spent many a miserable hour being tormented by the bigger kids at the pool in Monument Valley Park, until I learned how to swim faster and escape my tormenters.  And thanks to my (decidedly mediocre) swimming skills, I had no qualms about taking off in the 60’s to sail around the world, and thereby avoided going to law school/med school/business school-for which any sane person ought to give thanks!

 

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 1st, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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