Hazlehurst’s Blog
Insight and commentary from John Hazlehurst

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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USOC/LandCo/City circus ending?

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This morning’s joint press release from the USOC and LandCo, announcing that they have “resolved all disputes relating to the USOC and LandCo’s relationship as part of the project to retain the USOC in Colorado Springs” almost certainly signals that a similar resolution between the city and LandCo is in the offing.

So here’s the question: what will the agreement look like?  More to the point, who will pay, and what will they pay for? 

Rumor has it that Stephanie Streeter, the newly-appointed CEO of the USOC, worked out a deal with the City a month ago, which would kick in as soon as the LandCo dispute was resolved.

It has been clear for months that, while LandCo’s finances were not strong enough to move the project forward, they were nevertheless in a position to stall the deal indefinitely.  Such stalling tactics may have seemed unsporting and ungentlemanly, but real estate development is a rough game, and you play with the cards you’re dealt - unless you can deal yourself an ace off the bottom of the deck.

In all probability, LandCo has cut a deal, allowing the company to exit gracefully from the agreement in return for considerations of some sort-maybe in the form of debt relief, or real estate equity, or even, as some particularly suspicious folks have theorized, future tax relief for a project in which LandCo may have a residual interest.

More questions: is there a new developer, ready to step in and take over LandCo’s role?  Has the city filled the gaps with some combination of taxpayer dough, El Pomar grants, contributions from civic-minded citizens, and promises of future largesse?  Will the agreement be submitted to voters for approval, or will Council, as is its wont, just rubber-stamp it with no debate and a hearty round of mutual backslapping?

We’ll see - maybe even by tomorrow.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on June 10th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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Let the games end!

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The U.S. Olympic Committee/city/LandCo drama continues, with no end in sight - or if there is, the principal players aren’t talking. 

We don’t know whether the Mayor Lionel Rivera’s clandestine fundraising campaign to prop up the deal continues (to read the letter in its entirety, click here), or whether the USA Boxing still wants a $3 million purse to stay in town (to read the letter from USA Boxing to the mayor, click here), or whether LandCo can raise the $16 million required to make the deal work, or whether El Pomar is ready to drain its treasury and take over as principal funder or whether a Deus ex Machina will descend from above (The USOC supplemental stimulus bill, maybe?).

Here’s what we do know.  The deal has a fuse.  If it’s not done by the end of this month, it might never happen.  We also know that the USOC has an exit strategy.

It’s not clear whether Jim Scherr’s abrupt exit is in any way linked to the deal, but it is clear that the new leadership at USOC is less committed to the well-being, comfort and morale of the staff, and more committed to organizational survival.  If, come October, Chicago gets the nod to host the 2016 Olympics, you can expect to see the de facto departure of most of the USOC to Chicago. 

Some support staff will remain here, as of course will the Olympic Training Center, but the real USOC will be headquartered in a real city, where senior executives can more easily interact with sponsors. 

In the end, the USOC is a big, quasi-international business - kind of like, say, Citigroup on a much smaller scale.  And, like all such businesses, they have dragons to slay and mountains to climb.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 13th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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