Hazlehurst’s Blog
Insight and commentary from John Hazlehurst

Austin swims, the Springs flounders

15

Our city’s leadership class has, as you may have noticed, a new Best Big Cool Friend - Austin, Texas.

That relationship is not unlike that of Vince and Drama on “Entourage”– the devastatingly cool movie star (Adrian Grenier) who allows the hopeful loser (Kevin Dillon) to hang out with him.

Our city’s power people would like Colorado Springs to be just as cool, just as popular, and just as rich as Austin. That’d be great, not just for regional businesses, but especially for the arts.

As one of the trip participants, the estimable Bettina Swigger of COPPeR, noted in her blog that Austin supports the arts in a big way. Bettina wrote that:

  • Live Music contributes $616 million in economic impact and $11 million in local tax revenue
    There are 1,543 music-related businesses in Austin and 1,903 Austin music acts.
  • The not-for-profit performing arts and visual arts generate $532 million in economic impact and $6 million in local tax revenue.
  • The City of Austin provides nearly $5 million annually of the Hotel Occupancy Tax to contract with non-profit arts and cultural organizations for services rendered.
  • Creative industries in Austin generate $2.2 billion in economic activity and create 44,000 permanent jobs.

Can we learn from Austin? The power people think so. They’ve contracted with an Austin firm, Angelou Economics, who charged us a big chunk o’ change to prepare the “6035″ study. And last Friday, the featured speaker at the well-attended annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce was an Austin lawyer, Pike Powers, who has been a major player in Austin’s economic development efforts for many years.

But maybe the two cities are so dissimilar that we can neither learn from nor profit by Austin’s experiences.

Austin is a city of 760,000, the center of a metropolitan area of 1.7 million.

Like Colorado Springs, it has no major league sports teams-and that’s about where the similarities end.

Imagine a city that takes the best of Boulder, Denver, and Colorado Springs-and none of the bad stuff.

Austin has the state capitol, the best newspaper in Texas, the University of Texas, rational politics, a beautiful setting and an equable climate. Since the 1960s, Austin has had a reputation as a cool place to live-a place like Boston, San Francisco, Boulder, Marin County, Aspen, Miami, Charleston, or Santa Fe.

It’s famously quirky, but not nastily so. We have Focus, New Life, and Doug Bruce; Austin has SXSW, Austin City Limits, and Lance Armstrong. We’re about to ban homeless folks from camping along our polluted streams; Austin is the only city in Texas that has no ordinances forbidding women to appear topless in public.

We come close to matching Austin in a single category-Division I football teams. Our Air Force Falcons had a pretty good season, and they may well be invited to the Armed Forces Bowl. Undefeated and third-ranked Texas, which plays in the 100,000 seat Darryl Royal Stadium, may play for the national championship-and why not? They’ve won it four times.

Conclusion: Austin is a first-tier city, a powerfully vibrant metropolitan area with none of our handicaps. Vince can’t tell Drama how to become a devastatingly handsome chick magnet-he can only be a nice guy and let Drama follow him around like a lost puppy.

We’ll never be Austin.

Music? We couldn’t even keep 32 Bleu in business. Public funding for arts & culture? We’re closing the Pioneers Museum. Downtown skyscrapers springing from the ground? Our downtown parking lots have been vacant long enough to be nominated for the national register of historic places.

We’re not Austin-but we’re still a little bit cool. Maybe we could be some other city’s Best Big Cool Friend … Newark, New Jersey?

Posted by John Hazlehurst on November 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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Leader luncheons and the 6035 plan

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“Community Leader Lunches” follow a familiar script.

They take place in one of four venues: the Antlers, The Broadmoor, Cheyenne Mountain Resort or Penrose House.

You arrive, park, get your name tag and table assignment, spend a few minutes schmoozing and sit down.

You eat your salad. You eat your bread. You make polite conversation with your fellow sufferers. In desperation, you eat your faintly repellent chicken. A prominent person comes to the podium. He/she introduces the politicians in attendance. Polite applause. You listen to the featured speaker. You are subjected to videos, slides and a PowerPoint presentation. More polite applause. You leave.

Yesterday’s luncheon at the Cheyenne Mountain resort was intended to kickoff the implementation of the “6035” plan for regional economic development, prepared by Angelou Economics.

Angelos Angelou, the company’s founder and CEO, gave a thankfully brief and notably lethargic presentation outlining the challenges and opportunities that face our community. He concluded by saying “Ask not what economic development can do for you — ask rather what you can do for economic development.”

Somehow, paraphrasing President John Kennedy’s eloquent call to action to serve such a pedestrian and parochial goal seemed inappropriate. It reminded me of some particularly tasteless commercials aired during the Broncos-Redskins game, during which shots of our greatest national icons (the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial) were overlaid by images of beer bottles.

But that’s OK – now it was time for action. 6035’s organizers pledged that this particular community planning process would be very different from any previous iteration! It’s time for action, not words! And here’s what we heard.

An “implementation committee” had been created. The six folks named thereto are all, as Mick Jagger might have put it “men (and women) of wealth and taste.” And what would the committee implement?

With the help of a $100K grant from El Pomar, they plan to hire a “leader” by the first quarter of next year, to move forward and, like, implement the plan.

The luncheon concluded with a puzzling sequence of cheesy-but-inspiring video clips from Braveheart, Patton, Mr. Smith goes to Washington and a dozen other films, in which selfless leaders exhort their followers to persevere and conquer. It was a sad commentary upon the power of YouTube to add yet another layer of awfulness to already awful events.

OK, I’m being snarky and negative, making fun of my betters who are striving against the odds to keep this dull-witted city afloat. I plead guilty — but suppose that the organizers of this luncheon had opted for action, instead of stasis. Suppose that they’d taken a risk, and tried to show the city that its leaders can act, not just agree to hire someone to figure out how to take action.

Suppose that all the members of the implementation committee had stood before the 300+ attendees and said something along these lines:

“El Pomar has pledged $100,000 to the Pioneers Museum, on the condition that the people in this room collectively pledge $50,000 right now. Show the community that we can act, not just talk. We’re putting up a thousand bucks apiece. This isn’t a test — the media’s right here, the TV cameras are running. If the folks in this room can’t do it, who will? Success or failure — it’s up to you.”

Now that would have been something to behold — and instead of making fun of the  ”lads and ladies who lunch,” we media bottom-feeders would have something fun and uplifting to write about. And who knows — if I’d been horsecollared by one of the implementers, I might have written a check myself.

Is it OK if I post-date it?

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on November 18th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
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