PERRY: Denver pitches a fit over Aurora’s role as the little ingenue that could

Oh, I get it now. This histrionic Denver remake isn’t all about Eve, it’s all about Aurora.

Denver Downtown hoteliers, aided by complicit Denver politicians, are presenting Colorado a throat-clasping summer drama in trying to discredit Aurora’s simmering Gaylord hotel and conference center project.

Oh, the calamity.

For a couple of years now, Aurora has been rolling the 1,500-room Gaylord extravagasm up endless political, economic and industry hills, each time miraculously muscling this enviable project to new heights when it inevitably rolls back. For those of you with lives, Gaylord centers are massive hotel-conference projects dotting the country in places where you fly in, stay, drop a wad of cash and then mosey on home or to nearby vacation destinations. It’s Disneyland in a sealed unit for the well-budgeted conference goer.

And Aurora was able to persuade the Gaylord folks that they want to build a Colorado franchise right here on one of the state’s most breathtaking locales: a field near the airport. Yeah, me, too. But that’s where these things go — close to international airports where rich doctors, lawyers and multi-level marketing mavens meet for a few days among indoor rivers, cattle drives and pig roasts. This kind of conference center is big business, and Gaylord hotel proponents say that it’s a niche market completely untapped here in Colorado. The bottom line: if Gaylord doesn’t open here, those tourist dollars will go to other states.

The argument is so compelling that the state and Aurora has promised Team Gaylord that if they build this thing, and if they really come, then Gaylordians can keep hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax revenues that otherwise would never have existed. This, folks, is an important point. Neither the state nor the city are handing over your tax dollars, they’re telling Gaylord that some of the new taxes — and it’s a lot — generated by a hotel in a vacant field will go back to them. That distinction is frequently lost on critics of this project.

If it goes off as planned, the Gaylordium will spur an entirely new tourism industry right here in Aurora, and all across the state. That’s what’s happened in other Gaylord cities. Expect things like Gaylord ski packages. Gaylord Estes Park add-ons. Gaylord Downtown Denver Show and Cafe packages. You get the idea.

The Downtown Denver hoteliers, however, do not get it. They believe that Gaylord’s 1,500 extravagant rooms will bleed off downtown hotel visits. Consider this: Team Marriott last year bought Planet Gaylord. They have that kind of money. They also have serious control over many of the hotel chains in downtown Denver and all over Colorado. And they are the chief backers of this project and brought  RIDA and AREA into the project to get it done. Marriott believes that Gaylord will bring new tourists to the state who would not come if the hotel isn’t built. What’s more, those Gaylordsters will almost certainly extend their fantasy highland experience by checking into a hotel in Denver or somewhere else in the state.

Not convinced, the Downtown Denver hotel empire continues to strike back at the Gaylord effort, planting stories in Denver papers about financial details and updates that always lead back to fewer beds being filled under the shadow of the Gold Dome. Denver city officials, meanwhile, cluck their tongues in sympathy, denying a rush of schadenfreude as the big hens peck away at Aurora’s good fortune.

That’s what this is really all about. Imagine if Gaylord had chosen to build inside the Queen City’s realm near the airport. Do you honestly think that Denver City Hall wouldn’t be telling its Downtown hotelsters to shut the hell up? You’re damn right they would.

This is all about Aurora getting too big for Denver’s, umm, britches. Aurora stole away University of Colorado School of Medicine, hospital and megalopolis. Aurora has cemented a military complex future at Buckley. Aurora is pressing ahead on a freaking spaceport — a spaceport, folks. Aurora is pushing back at Denver’s current lame attempt to steam-roll its way into airport development projects. Aurora came too close to stealing away the stock show. And now this. A Gaylordarium? In Aurora? Not if Denver can help it. We are the pathetic little ingenue about to get our own starring role, and Margo Channing, err, Denver, simply won’t have it. Fasten your seat belts, Aurora, it’s going to be a bumpy fight.

Reach Editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com