Even before the dust settles on this week’s groundbreaking work at the Gaylord Hotel site — on what was up until recently a chunk of prairie land — Aurora should take the lead on clearing the air while trucks there clear the ground.
Almost miraculously, the embattled massive 1,500-room hotel survived two, full-scale assaults by state lawmakers intent on scuttling the project.
Three things are perfectly clear: First, Aurora has done nothing illegal or improper in bringing the Gaylord project to fruition. Second: These latest assaults at the state Capitol were prompted by other hotel interests in the state asserting political influence to kill the Gaylord project because of feared competition. And those state lawmakers who feigned other concerns, should be as ashamed of themselves as the Denver and Colorado Springs hoteliers who’ve lied, cheated and connived to find a way to kill the Gaylord Colorado.
But just as important, there are plenty of state lawmakers, Aurora residents and others who have valid concerns about how urban renewal projects are created and carried out, including the Gaylord project. We’re the first to point out that Aurora made several public relations errors along the way, but the city has a clean conscience in how it got Gaylord to come here and build.
Now, Aurora would be wise to step up and lead the way in a statewide effort to undo decades of bad legislation and inane bureaucracy that has fueled real or disingenuous arguments by critics.
The biggest eye opener for many people is that cities are able to deem agricultural prairie land, that’s never seen anything more urban than a prairie dog village, “blight” and appropriate for urban renewal. If that sounds stupid, it’s because it is.
But it’s currently the only way that local governments can create projects like Gaylord. The power of an urban renewal authority is far different than that of a city. The authority is able to easily create tax districts to fund infrastructure that developments like this one demand. Other projects demanding complex funding for infrastructure include Denver International Airport, the Western Stock Show complex, the Anschutz medical campus, Elitch Gardens, Arvada’s massive retail complex along I-76, and hundreds more. Big ideas take big money and big cooperative pacts. Aurora is one of dozens of Colorado governments that have used the state’s urban renewal laws to benefit residents.
The laws are convoluted and outdated. And since Aurora is positioned to have a need for creating more special districts for projects like this, probably more than anywhere else in the metro area, it behooves the city to be a leader in finding a way for locally controlled governments to create and finance the communities that their constituents want. Besides the obvious inanities of these urban renewal problems, Aurora, and other counties, must come to an agreement on how to create special taxing districts that are encompassed by both city and county governments.
And above all, Aurora and all communities must have a frank discussion about the wisdom of regularly handing over “incentives” to corporations for doing business in our state and communities. While it is arguably successful, it’s just corporate welfare, unfair to small business entrepreneurs, and ineffective on a large scale. If every Colorado community were prohibited from offering cash to companies, they would still come, and locations would be decided by merit, rather than giveaways.
Perhaps this will be the end of the bizarre lengths Gaylord project critics will roll out. We doubt it, even though it appears the project is now underway. But the problems encountered should prompt Aurora to be a leader in gathering legitimately concerned peers in finding a way out of the urban renewal swamp certain to swallow a valuable project here or somewhere else in Colorado.