State Treasurer And Adams County Judge Raise Additional Problems
by Charles C. Bonniwell
The star-crossed Gaylord Rockies hotel project appears to be running into continued turbulence. Originally envisioned to be part of the relocated and expanded National Western Stock Show complex, the Aurora hotel and convention site has gone through a seemingly never ending series of complexities, alterations and controversies.
Back in the spring of 2011, Nashville-based Gaylord Entertainment announced it was building a new Gaylord Western Hotel and Convention complex at the High Point site near Peña Boulevard and Tower Road. It was to be next door to the new home of the National Western Stock Show which was going to move from its Denver home after 105 years. Initially supported by then new Denver Mayor Michael Hancock the move of National Western was squashed by a revolt of the City Council, led by Councilman Charlie Brown.
Gaylord Entertainment nonetheless demanded massive tax concessions from the City of Aurora and the State of Colorado totaling over $380 million for the $800 million project. As outlined by the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle in April through June of 2012, Gaylord Entertainment being awarded over $81 million in state tax subsidies appeared to be part of what some called a rigged process by the Colorado Economic Development Commission. Under the Colorado Regional Tourism Act (the “RTA”), small cities and counties were supposed to be able to compete in an aboveboard process for the best projects pursuant to the criteria set out in the RTA. Small towns, including Glendale, and counties were forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to submit applications in which they apparently had little or no chance of being awarded a grant.
The project became enmeshed in further controversies when just after the award of the state subsidies, Gaylord Entertainment announced it, in fact, had no intention of building the hotel and was getting out of the development business, a fact it kept from the commission. It sold its interest in the hotel project and the tax subsidies to Houston-based RIDA Development Corp.
In September 2013, 11 Front Range hotels sued the Economic Development Commission and the City of Aurora in Denver County District Court to vitiate the state award. The lawsuit was dismissed the following spring. Aurora in turn sued the Front Range hotels in Arapahoe District Court asserting that the action by the hotels delayed the funding of the project and constituted tortuous interference, but that suit was in turn dismissed in the fall of 2013.
In the fall of 2014 two residents of Aurora filed suit in Adams District court challenging the validity of Aurora awarding $300 million in subsidies to the hotel project. In February 2015, Adams County District Court Judge Ted C. Tow III voided the Tabor election set up by the City of Aurora whereby the only allowed voter was an employee of the landowner. The court indicated that a city-wide election would likely have to be undertaken. Within hours of the decision, Aurora filed an appeal of the decision to the Colorado Court of Appeals.
As a result of the Court ruling Colorado Treasurer Walker Stapleton asked the Legislative Audit Committee to examine whether the state should honor the subsidies awarded by the Colorado Economic Development Commission. Stapleton also sent a letter to the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade asking why the EDC offered the incentives in the first place given they may not in fact need the subsidies and proper financing documents may not have been submitted.
Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan promptly fired off an angry letter to Walker Stapleton saying the issues raised by his office had already been “discredited” years before. He went on to declare, “What is concerning to me is that your letter seems not only politically motivated but ill-informed.” He then opined, “It seems an inappropriate role for the Office of the State Treasurer to involve itself in a commercial dispute that is before the courts.”
Despite all of the continued controversies, developer RIDA Development Corp. and the City of Aurora seek to give the impression of continued progress. RIDA announced in February that the hotel and convention complex would feature a massive indoor and outdoor water park. Westword and other publications ridiculed the water park concept for a hotel project in Aurora.
Aurora Mayor Hogan in turn, told the Economic Development Commission that the Gaylord project would break ground between October and December of this year. This will only be possible provided it wins its appeal to the Colorado Court of Appeals on the issue of the Tabor election.
Observers indicate that the enormous time, effort and resources for the Gaylord hotel and convention center put in by Aurora’s Mayor Steve Hogan could show him to be a political leader in the mode of DeWitt Clinton of New York whose vision and determination made possible the key transportation project of the early 19th century — the Erie Canal. Others view him more as a Captain Ahab driven to capture a white whale of a development project that will seriously damage the future economic progress of the City of Aurora. Only time will tell which caricature of him is closest to the truth, but crunch time for helping to make that determination is fast approaching.