I suppose that we should be all a-twitter, eagerly anticipating the forthcoming announcement that we’ve all be waiting for. Who dat? Who dat? Who dat … gonna run the USOC?

According to a recent column by Phil Hersh of the Chicago Tribune, there are six finalists:

• Sandy Alderson, a former major league baseball vice-president and former CEO of the San Diego Padres
• Scott Blackmun, former USOC general counsel and its acting CEO in 2000-01
• Norm Bellingham, the current chief operating officer of the USOC
• Mark Lewis, who led the joint marketing venture between organizers of the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics and the USOC. Lewis is now president of Jet Set Sports, a global hospitality company with extensive Olympic sports business
• Chuck Wielgus, USA Swimming CEO
• The sixth candidate, whose name is unknown, is the only one from a corporate background with no link to the USOC or the Olympic movement.

Here’s a question - should we care?

Would any of the six make a difference in this city, as well as to the USOC?

As an organization, the USOC is in better shape than, say, Lehman Brothers or Bernie Madoff’s securities business, but that’s about it. During the last few years, the organization has managed to infuriate the International Olympic Committee, alienate the national Olympic committees of most other nations, and blow New York’s bid for 2012 as well as Chicago’s attempt to host the 2016 games.

Apparently acting on the theory that if the tough guys beat you up, you should turn on the weak kids and beat them up in turn, the USOC shook down its bankrupt hometown for $30 million. Result: the organization is actively loathed by most Springs residents.

Can this be turned around?

I don’t know about the national/international stuff. I suspect that a new paradigm is emerging, and that the United States will become less and less influential in the Olympic business (it’s a business, folks, not a ‘movement’) as more countries crash the party and demand a place at the table.

But for Colorado Springs, the best candidate is Scott Blackmun. He lives here, he’s deeply involved in the community, and he’ll know how to mend fences and heal the deep rift between the USOC and its host city. He’s smart enough to realize that it will take years, not months, actions, not soothing remarks.

Meanwhile, I have one New Years’ resolution: I will never enter the building at 27 South Tejon that the city is handing over to the USOC. The building perfectly symbolizes corporate rapacity, governmental incompetence, and bad architecture.

I can forgive the first two, but to go through all that grief and end up with a dismal piece of architrash -  that’s too much!

So to the architectural community, here’s a tip: yes, Virginia, it is possible to build elegant, beautiful, and functional six-story buildings. Just take a walk up Tejon Street, and look at the Hibbard’s building, or at the DeGroff Building … too bad the architects of those two structures died half a century ago, or you could have gotten some useful tips.

<-Back to CSBJ.com

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 16th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: 27 South Tejon, USOC

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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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