Denver

Denver

 

Chap 19 Policy Cut

 

Denver:

Denver: Politics and Policy Systems

Denver presents yet another variation of a postwar economic development policy system, one which the local, “native”, although displaced from power in 1947, resisted until the mid-fifties the “growth” policies of the new business reformers. The native business elite (the “Seventeenth Street tycoons”) near the end of World War II, like Oklahoma City’s, was especially narrow—the widespread local perception was that a handful of key business leaders controlled the long-time (1923) mayor, Ben Stapleton and had done so since the 1920’s. Their knee-jerk reaction to the inevitable wartime growth and its associated problems was best summarized by Stapleton’s famous comment to a question concerning Denver’s wartime housing crisis: “If all these people would only go back where they came from, we wouldn’t have a housing shortage”.

 

The traditional business elite prospered greatly from Denver’s pre-war economic base which rested on white collar government employees working in the numerous regional headquarters of the state and federal governments, tourism, and extraction and export of raw materials. The almost feared an increase in manufacturing because its pollution threatened their environment, its workers brought unionism, and branch plant corporate leadership was unlikely to integrate with the native business elite. Aside from tourism, Denver’s traditional business leadership was sufficiently motivated to acquire the Lowry Air Force Base in 1938 and the Buckley Air Force base in 1943. In 1948 there had been 10,000 federal civilian employees in Denver. By 1961 the number was 23,000 and by 1975, 32,000[1].

Click to access DenverSuburbsMPS.pdf

Their fear of corporate new comers was based on folk such as our friend, Henry Kaiser who during the war established the federally-owned Denver Ordinance Plant,  employing more than a thousand workers. Abbott concurs: “It was modern carpetbaggers attracted to Denver by wartime who provided the initial impulses for change”. Outsiders captured leadership in banks (Elwood Brooks), and aggressively pushed downtown redevelopment (William Zeckendorf) and these outsiders were supported by the sympathetic Denver Post controlled by Palmer Hoyt formerly employed by the Portland Oregonian[2].

By 1947, a tired and very vulnerable Ben Stapleton lost the election to James Quigg Newton, a thirty-five year old, Yale Law School, and former Supreme Court clerk to William O. Douglas—and a Navy veteran. Calling for change of all sorts, but especially attacking the city’s obviously declining appearance, economic vibrancy, and all too obvious cronyism. Newton held sway for two terms, and while unable to achieve charter reform (which was typical reform of western business reformers), his “Michigan Mafia” of imported professional municipal officials modernized and upgraded the City Hall bureaucracy and its operations.  The two mayors who followed Newton carried on the same traditions well into the 1960’s.

 

By the mid-1950 the traditional business elite lost control over the Denver Chamber. “Newton presided over a postwar generation of bankers, real estate brokers, merchants and small industrialists who (in the mid-1950’s), in concert with the chamber of commerce, sought growth at any price.”[3] Under the new reform business leadership, the Chamber “began to produce booster literature of a sort unimaginable during the 1940’s”. “The Chamber and the Colorado Bureau of Tourism (established in 1937) began to place advertisements in national magazines extolling Colorado’s virtues as a vacation spot”. During these years, Colorado’s ski industry came into being; by 1975 there were thirty major ski areas in operation and dozens of ski equipment manufacturers and wholesalers selling their wares.[4]

 

In partnership with the business reform mayors the Chamber during the middle and late fifties embarked on several important growth initiatives such as diverting water to the Blue Mountain Reservoir and Dillon Lake into the city’s water system. But their critical action was to ensure effective access to Eisenhower’s 1956 new Interstate Highway Program. As proposed, the Interstate Highway Act stopped dead at Denver, limited western access as well as access into Colorado’s interior. Denver’s Mayor and Governor, working with Eisenhower, were able to obtain funding to build out I-70 to Salt Lake City—a victory for Denver reminiscent of the earlier railroad era. A final economic development-related initiative commenced in the early 1960’s; after several years of effort, Denver was chosen by the USOC in 1970 as America’s sole 1976 Olympics applicant (1970 Denver won the IOC endorsement.

 

Denver’s  Urban Renewal

Colorado enacted its urban renewal enabling legislation in 1958, but Denver began its efforts in 1955 when seventy-five local businessmen established Downtown Denver Incorporated (DDI). Almost immediately DDI contracted with Urban Land Institute to survey/analyze the downtown and prepare a report. In the next year, 176 firms formed the Downtown Denver Improvement Association whose core purpose was to lobby the state legislature for legislation to create an urban renewal authority.

 

When the state responded with the 1958 state enabling law, the City quickly established in that year the Denver Urban Renewal Authority[5]. This was followed in 1961 by the formation of a public/private Downtown Denver Master Plan Committee—charged with writing the urban renewal master plan. Its report, Development Guide for Downtown Denver called for coordinated transportation infrastructure and redevelopment of the downtown core (the Skyline Project). In 1964, another private sector EDO, Forward Metro Denver was established to guide the Skyline Project through the approval and bond referendum process. But this steady, thoughtful approach to urban renewal did little to impress the voters. In 1964, they turned down a $8 million bond issue to finance Denver’s first CBD urban renewal project: the Skyline Renewal Project.

 

Mother Nature apparently was not happy about this. The 1965 ‘flood of the century’ took out much of the downtown and solidified the public consensus that action was needed. Not to take any chances, the City successfully lobbied the Johnson Administration to accept the construction of the Exhibition Hall as the local match for federal urban renewal dollars[6], allowing the city to delete a bond issuance from the 1967 referendum. The voters approved the Skyline Project (sans bond issuance) by over 70%. Thirty-seven obsolete and deteriorated slum and blighted blocks of Denver’s downtown went under the bulldozer[7]. Denver followed up with a second twenty-two block project, Cherry Creek. That project included facilities to house the Denver Community College, the Metropolitan State College, and the University of Colorado-Denver. The most controversial element of Cherry Creek, the Auraria neighborhood, required dislocation of its black and Chicano residents, and wholesale housing demolition. Voters in 1969, however, approved the bond issuance and residential opposition went for naught..

 

In its CBD redevelopment phase, DURA invested very little, certainly less than 2%, in residential neighborhoods and housing. The Agency received “strong support from city officials”. Even after the passage of the 1974 CDBG Act which ended urban renewal grants, DURA made the transition by contracting with the city’s recipient of CDBG funds, the Community Development Agency, to operate several CDA housing programs. “With two-thirds of its staff working on housing programs in the neighborhoods, [DURA’s] public focus was still concentrated on the downtown”. An important reason for DURA’s survival and downtown focus, was that the state of Colorado in 1968 had approved tax increment financing  legislation specifically for Denver. By using TIF DURA was able to issue its own TIF bonds to finance its downtown redevelopment projects. DURA had made the transition from the Age of Urban Renewal to the 1980’s with its CBD mission pretty much intact, its political position quite solid and secure.

 

In 1981, DURA announced that it would redevelop nineteen blocks immediately adjacent to the CBD. Using its bonding authority, DURA wanted to entirely demolish eight blocks for condo development. The area did not precisely fit the legislative definition of blight, which guided DURA’s ability to act, and the business and middle class residents of these blocks exploded. They organized the Golden Triangle Association, fought back, lobbied city government. DURA readjusted some boundaries so to split off some corporate opposition, but it didn’t work. With over one hundred protestors at the meeting, the City Council overwhelmingly vetoed the project. In Denver, the Age of Urban Renewal was truly over only in November 1981. From that time on (early 1980’s) the Denver Urban Renewal Agency adjusted its mission, focusing more on TIF, affordable housing and neighborhoods—as well as downtown[8].

[1] Dennis R. Judd, “From Cowtown to Sunbelt City: Boosterism and Economic Growth in Denver”, in Susan S. Fainstein et al (Eds) Restructuring the City: the Political Economy of Urban Redevelopment (New York, Longman, 1983), p. 173.

[2] Carl Abbott, the New Urban America, op. cit., pp. 124-125.

[3] Lyle Dorsett, the Queen City: a History of Denver (Boulder, Pruett, 1977), p. 251.

[4] Dennis R. Judd, “From Cowtown to Sunbelt City: Boosterism and Economic Growth in Denver”, in Susan S. Fainstein et al (Eds) Restructuring the City: the Political Economy of Urban Redevelopment (New York, Longman, 1983), p. 172.

[5] DURA’s board was composed of a mixture of large corporate executives, downtown real estate interests and key banking leadership; Judd, From Cowtown to Sunbelt City, op. cit., p. 180.

[6] The same legislation allowed seven other cities to receive large urban renewal grants without local match. This legislation may have been urban renewal’s largest pork barrel financing. Harry Byrd ( Norfolk) put it together.

[7] A significant portion of the Skyline Project remained unfinished, most used for more than a decade for parking lots. Private sector investment in Denver’s skyline was slow in coming. Still taxes paid to the city from these blocks totaled $181,000 in 1967—a decade later (1977) nearly $2.5 million dollars were paid to the city. There was very little relocation (presumably SROs largely) involved in the Skyline Project. (Judd, From Cowtown to Sunbelt City, op. cit., p.180). In 1972 an $87 million bond was approved for police/fire, libraries, a sports stadium and the Center for Performing Arts. This massive public facility and improvement financing did generate an equivalent private sector investment—banks, headquarters, hotels and lots of office buildings. Much of the downtown street light and utilities were installed with this bond issuance. By 1982, the total post-Skyline private investment in the CBD exceed $2 billion (Judd, p. 181).

[8] http://www.renewdenver.org/assets/files/50thAnniversaryReport.pdf; Denver Urban Renewal Authority, Fifty Years of Revitalizing Denver (2008)

End Chap 19 Policy Cut

==========

Policy system Cut

Denver:  The Denver Planning Commission was an active agency. As early as 1939, it had put together the Upper Platte River Regional Planning Commission (three counties) to put some order on its suburban counties. But when a ten member Denver Planning Commission delegation to the Urban Land Institute conference at MIT came back home warning the befuddled local residents that a “sinister disease” of decentralization was about to hit their city, Denver went into high gear to cope with its suburbanization. Even by that point Denver suburban growth rates were five times the central city rate. Denver quickly enacted a housing code to preserve the city’s attractiveness and stem the flight to suburbs. Not wasting any time, Denver annexed five square miles between 1941 and 1946. By that time, however, the three counties in the Upper Platte River RPC pulled out—upset at the lack of sensitivity of City planners to their needs. Metropolitan planning had suffered its first setback.

 

The real thorn in the suburbs’ butt was the Denver Water Board. Ever since its 1918 formation, the Board had been chintzy in allocating scarce water resources to locations outside the city perimeter. For a variety of good and bad reasons, the Board, which was appointed by the mayor and reflected the priorities of the Chamber business and real estate elites, felt threatened that suburban growth could result from its supplying suburban areas with water. By the time the business reform mayor, Quigg Newton, got control in the late forties, the Water Board was fairly independent and unresponsive to his initiatives.

 

Denver: Denver participated in the1920’s planning movement, establishing, with strong corporate participation, its Planning Commission. “Organized with the support of major bankers and the Real Estate Exchange, the commission’s central concern was to preserve downtown property values through capital improvements embracing roads, freeways and parks”. Unlike reluctant Portland, however, Denver feeling pressure from increasing war production and in-migrating population focused its planning to confront the blossoming housing crisis. Doubling down on planning, the City embarked on its “Metropolitan Planning Project”[1] in August, 1942. The infusion of Rockefeller funds in 1943 broadened its initial manufacturing base focus to a more “comprehensive” land use, workforce and industrial reconversion initiative; its conclusion was that the region needed to focus more on adequate electric power and water[2].

 

 

By 1948 water was allocated only to those suburbs which in the judgment of the Water Board had adequate zoning and housing codes in place. The resentment of the suburbs, however, grew exponentially during the severe drought of the early fifties. Alleging it was necessary to preserve sufficient water resources for Denver, the Water Board “blue-lined” water allocations to suburban areas. By 1954-1955 the blue-lined suburban areas were rationing water. Suburban counties rejected the joint development of trans-mountain water in 1954 and that forced Denver to go it alone at a jaw-dropping $115 million cost. The blue line allocation system was kept in place until 1960. By then, however, several suburbs (Littleton, Englewood, Westminster and Aurora—who joined forces with Colorado Springs instead) had decided to go it alone and develop their own water. By 1962, the four county Denver metro areas had developed ten city water systems (in addition to Denver’s) and several dozen special water districts[3].

 

While all this was going on, Denver kept on annexing in a hundred small bits its periphery. Between 1941 and 1974 Denver doubled its size through annexation. It did not abandon metropolitan planning, however. But that tool was not at all successful. “The legacy of bitterness left by the water fights doomed most of the subsequent efforts to create regional service districts. In 1965, 1966, and 1967 Denver’s attempts to create regional government to administer six services failed in the state legislature. Sensing time was running out, and that the city was becoming politically isolated, Denver initiated a series of annexation efforts in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s … this land war brought on an overwhelming political reaction”[4]—the Poundstone Amendment. All in all a tale reminiscent of that told in Chapter 3 by Dilworth Richardson about pre-1900 New York City suburbs, Denver had galvanized suburban opposition to Denver expansion[5].

 

While outside the time period encompassed by this section, Denver’s city-suburban break point came in 1973-1974. Two laws passed at that time, the Poundstone Amendment and the Boundary Control Commission, cemented Denver’s suburban autonomy. The story behind the Poundstone Amendment offers additional insight into this development. Freda Poundstone reacted rather negatively when, in 1973, the Denver Supreme Court decided that Denver must desegregate its schools. The decision presumably drove more Denver citizens to the suburbs, but also had the effect of raising concerns by suburbanites who perceived themselves in danger of further Denver annexation. Freda was one of those concerned suburbanites. With no political experience, she did her best imitation of Jane Jacobs and convinced the surrounding suburbs and the state legislature to approve legislation which required the consent of the voters in the county in which an annexation was intended. Perhaps surprisingly, some in Denver believe the shock to Denver’s citizens that Poundstone had effectively shut down Denver’s expansion forced Denver citizens to look at themselves and forge a new identity and commence their own revitalization.

 

 

 

[1] The Project was a cooperative effort by the Denver Planning Commission, the National Resource Planning Board and the University of Denver to “preserve” the city’s recently grown manufacturing base.

[2] Carl Abbott, The New Urban America, op. cit. p. 116.

[3] Carl Abbott, the New Urban America, op. cit., pp. 176-177.

[4] Dennis Judd, “From Cowtown to Sunbelt City” in Susan Fainstein et al, Restructuring the City,  op. cit., p.187.

[5] Richardson Dilworth, The Urban Origins of Suburban Autonomy (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2005)

=======================

 

Denver:  The Denver Planning Commission was an active agency. As early as 1939, it had put together the Upper Platte River Regional Planning Commission (three counties) to put some order on its suburban counties. But when a ten member Denver Planning Commission delegation to the Urban Land Institute conference at MIT came back home warning the befuddled local residents that a “sinister disease” of decentralization was about to hit their city, Denver went into high gear to cope with its suburbanization. Even by that point Denver suburban growth rates were five times the central city rate. Denver quickly enacted a housing code to preserve the city’s attractiveness and stem the flight to suburbs. Not wasting any time, Denver annexed five square miles between 1941 and 1946. By that time, however, the three counties in the Upper Platte River RPC pulled out—upset at the lack of sensitivity of City planners to their needs. Metropolitan planning had suffered its first setback.

 

The real thorn in the suburbs’ butt was the Denver Water Board. Ever since its 1918 formation, the Board had been chintzy in allocating scarce water resources to locations outside the city perimeter. For a variety of good and bad reasons, the Board, which was appointed by the mayor and reflected the priorities of the Chamber business and real estate elites, felt threatened that suburban growth could result from its supplying suburban areas with water. By the time the business reform mayor, Quigg Newton, got control in the late forties, the Water Board was fairly independent and unresponsive to his initiatives.

 

By 1948 water was allocated only to those suburbs which in the judgment of the Water Board had adequate zoning and housing codes in place. The resentment of the suburbs, however, grew exponentially during the severe drought of the early fifties. Alleging it was necessary to preserve sufficient water resources for Denver, the Water Board “blue-lined” water allocations to suburban areas. By 1954-1955 the blue-lined suburban areas were rationing water. Suburban counties rejected the joint development of trans-mountain water in 1954 and that forced Denver to go it alone at a jaw-dropping $115 million cost. The blue line allocation system was kept in place until 1960. By then, however, several suburbs (Littleton, Englewood, Westminster and Aurora—who joined forces with Colorado Springs instead) had decided to go it alone and develop their own water. By 1962, the four county Denver metro areas had developed ten city water systems (in addition to Denver’s) and several dozen special water districts[1].

 

While all this was going on, Denver kept on annexing in a hundred small bits its periphery. Between 1941 and 1974 Denver doubled its size through annexation. It did not abandon metropolitan planning, however. But that tool was not at all successful. “The legacy of bitterness left by the water fights doomed most of the subsequent efforts to create regional service districts. In 1965, 1966, and 1967 Denver’s attempts to create regional government to administer six services failed in the state legislature. Sensing time was running out, and that the city was becoming politically isolated, Denver initiated a series of annexation efforts in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s … this land war brought on an overwhelming political reaction”[2]—the Poundstone Amendment. All in all a tale reminiscent of that told in Chapter 3 by Dilworth Richardson about pre-1900 New York City suburbs, Denver had galvanized suburban opposition to Denver expansion[3].

 

While outside the time period encompassed by this section, Denver’s city-suburban break point came in 1973-1974. Two laws passed at that time, the Poundstone Amendment and the Boundary Control Commission, cemented Denver’s suburban autonomy. The story behind the Poundstone Amendment offers additional insight into this development. Freda Poundstone reacted rather negatively when, in 1973, the Denver Supreme Court decided that Denver must desegregate its schools. The decision presumably drove more Denver citizens to the suburbs, but also had the effect of raising concerns by suburbanites who perceived themselves in danger of further Denver annexation. Freda was one of those concerned suburbanites. With no political experience, she did her best imitation of Jane Jacobs and convinced the surrounding suburbs and the state legislature to approve legislation which required the consent of the voters in the county in which an annexation was intended. Perhaps surprisingly, some in Denver believe the shock to Denver’s citizens that Poundstone had effectively shut down Denver’s expansion forced Denver citizens to look at themselves and forge a new identity and commence their own revitalization.

 

[1] Carl Abbott, the New Urban America, op. cit., pp. 176-177.

[2] Dennis Judd, “From Cowtown to Sunbelt City” in Susan Fainstein et al, Restructuring the City,  op. cit., p.187.

[3] Richardson Dilworth, The Urban Origins of Suburban Autonomy (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2005)

---

Denver: Denver participated in the1920’s planning movement, establishing, with strong corporate participation, its Planning Commission. “Organized with the support of major bankers and the Real Estate Exchange, the commission’s central concern was to preserve downtown property values through capital improvements embracing roads, freeways and parks”. Unlike reluctant Portland, however, Denver feeling pressure from increasing war production and in-migrating population focused its planning to confront the blossoming housing crisis. Doubling down on planning, the City embarked on its “Metropolitan Planning Project”[1] in August, 1942. The infusion of Rockefeller funds in 1943 broadened its initial manufacturing base focus to a more “comprehensive” land use, workforce and industrial reconversion initiative; its conclusion was that the region needed to focus more on adequate electric power and water[2].

 

[1] The Project was a cooperative effort by the Denver Planning Commission, the National Resource Planning Board and the University of Denver to “preserve” the city’s recently grown manufacturing base.

[2] Carl Abbott, The New Urban America, op. cit. p. 116.

======================

Policy system cut

Denver’s  Urban Renewal

Colorado enacted its urban renewal enabling legislation in 1958, but Denver began its efforts in 1955 when seventy-five local businessmen established Downtown Denver Incorporated (DDI). Almost immediately DDI contracted with Urban Land Institute to survey/analyze the downtown and prepare a report. In the next year, 176 firms formed the Downtown Denver Improvement Association whose core purpose was to lobby the state legislature for legislation to create an urban renewal authority.

 

When the state responded with the 1958 state enabling law, the City quickly established in that year the Denver Urban Renewal Authority[1]. This was followed in 1961 by the formation of a public/private Downtown Denver Master Plan Committee—charged with writing the urban renewal master plan. Its report, Development Guide for Downtown Denver called for coordinated transportation infrastructure and redevelopment of the downtown core (the Skyline Project). In 1964, another private sector EDO, Forward Metro Denver was established to guide the Skyline Project through the approval and bond referendum process. But this steady, thoughtful approach to urban renewal did little to impress the voters. In 1964, they turned down an $8 million bond issue to finance Denver’s first CBD urban renewal project: the Skyline Renewal Project.

 

Mother Nature apparently was not happy about this. The 1965 ‘flood of the century’ took out much of the downtown and solidified the public consensus that action was needed. Not to take any chances, the City successfully lobbied the Johnson Administration to accept the construction of the Exhibition Hall as the local match for federal urban renewal dollars[2], allowing the city to delete a bond issuance from the 1967 referendum. The voters approved the Skyline Project (sans bond issuance) by over 70%. Thirty-seven obsolete and deteriorated slum and blighted blocks of Denver’s downtown went under the bulldozer[3]. Denver followed up with a second twenty-two block project, Cherry Creek. That project included facilities to house the Denver Community College, the Metropolitan State College, and the University of Colorado-Denver. The most controversial element of Cherry Creek, the Auraria neighborhood, required dislocation of its black and Chicano residents, and wholesale housing demolition. Voters in 1969, however, approved the bond issuance and residential opposition went for naught..

 

In its CBD redevelopment phase, DURA invested very little, certainly less than 2%, in residential neighborhoods and housing. The Agency received “strong support from city officials”. Even after the passage of the 1974 CDBG Act which ended urban renewal grants, DURA made the transition by contracting with the city’s recipient of CDBG funds, the Community Development Agency, to operate several CDA housing programs. “With two-thirds of its staff working on housing programs in the neighborhoods, [DURA’s] public focus was still concentrated on the downtown”. An important reason for DURA’s survival and downtown focus, was that the state of Colorado in 1968 had approved tax increment financing  legislation specifically for Denver. By using TIF DURA was able to issue its own TIF bonds to finance its downtown redevelopment projects. DURA had made the transition from the Age of Urban Renewal to the 1980’s with its CBD mission pretty much intact, its political position quite solid and secure.

 

In 1981, DURA announced that it would redevelop nineteen blocks immediately adjacent to the CBD. Using its bonding authority, DURA wanted to entirely demolish eight blocks for condo development. The area did not precisely fit the legislative definition of blight, which guided DURA’s ability to act, and the business and middle class residents of these blocks exploded. They organized the Golden Triangle Association, fought back, lobbied city government. DURA readjusted some boundaries so to split off some corporate opposition, but it didn’t work. With over one hundred protestors at the meeting, the City Council overwhelmingly vetoed the project. In Denver, the Age of Urban Renewal was truly over only in November 1981. From that time on (early 1980’s) the Denver Urban Renewal Agency adjusted its mission, focusing more on TIF, affordable housing and neighborhoods—as well as downtown[4].

 

[1] DURA’s board was composed of a mixture of large corporate executives, downtown real estate interests and key banking leadership; Judd, From Cowtown to Sunbelt City, op. cit., p. 180.

[2] The same legislation allowed seven other cities to receive large urban renewal grants without local match. This legislation may have been urban renewal’s largest pork barrel financing. Harry Byrd ( Norfolk) put it together.

[3] A significant portion of the Skyline Project remained unfinished, most used for more than a decade for parking lots. Private sector investment in Denver’s skyline was slow in coming. Still taxes paid to the city from these blocks totaled $181,000 in 1967—a decade later (1977) nearly $2.5 million dollars were paid to the city. There was very little relocation (presumably SROs largely) involved in the Skyline Project. (Judd, From Cowtown to Sunbelt City, op. cit., p.180). In 1972 an $87 million bond was approved for police/fire, libraries, a sports stadium and the Center for Performing Arts. This massive public facility and improvement financing did generate an equivalent private sector investment—banks, headquarters, hotels and lots of office buildings. Much of the downtown street light and utilities were installed with this bond issuance. By 1982, the total post-Skyline private investment in the CBD exceeded $2 billion (Judd, p. 181).

[4] http://www.renewdenver.org/assets/files/50thAnniversaryReport.pdf; Denver Urban Renewal Authority, Fifty Years of Revitalizing Denver (2008)

 

End of policy system cut

===============

Denver

Denver presents yet another variation of a postwar ED policy system, one which the prewar business elite, although formally displaced from power in 1947, resisted growth policies of the new business reformers until the mid-fifties. The old prewar business elites (the “Seventeenth Street tycoons”) controlled long-time (since 1923) mayor, Ben Stapleton. Their knee-jerk reaction to wartime growth and its associated problems was summarized by Stapleton’s famous comment to a question concerning Denver’s wartime housing crisis: “If all these people would only go back where they came from, we wouldn’t have a housing shortage”.

 

The old elite prospered from Denver’s prewar economic base which rested on white collar government employees working in the numerous regional state/federal government headquarters (in 1948 there were 10000 government workers), tourism, and raw material extraction/export. They feared manufacturing because its pollution threatened the environment, brought unions, and branch plant corporate leadership was unlikely to integrate into the local business culture. It was sufficiently motivated to acquire the Lowry Air Force Base in 1938 and the Buckley Air Force base in 1943. In 1948 there had been 10,000 federal civilian employees in Denver (Judd, 1983, p. 173).

 

“It was modern carpetbaggers attracted to Denver by wartime who provided the initial impulses for change”. Outsiders like Elwood Brooks, a bank CEO who supported CBD redevelopment by NYC’s commercial developer William Zeckendorf, were encouraged by outsider Palmer Hoyt’s Denver Post (Abbott, 1981, pp. 124-5). In 1947, a tired and vulnerable Ben Stapleton lost the election to James Quigg Newton, a thirty-five year old, Yale Law School, former William O. Douglas Supreme Court clerk, and a Navy veteran. Calling for change of all sorts, but concentrating on the city’s visibly declining appearance, economic vibrancy, and much-despised old boy cronyism, Newton won and stayed for two terms.

 

Unable to achieve desperately desired charter reform, Newton’s imported professional “Michigan Mafia” administrators upgraded City Hall’s bureaucracy.  Change hit the chamber also. By mid-1950 older business elites lost control and the Chamber “began to produce booster literature of a sort unimaginable during the 1940’s”. The Chamber and Colorado Bureau of Tourism (established in 1937) placed advertisements in national magazines “extolling Colorado’s virtues as a vacation spot”. During these years, Colorado’s ski industry was born; by 1975 thirty major ski areas were in operation and dozens of ski equipment manufacturers/wholesalers “sold their wares” (Judd, 1983, p. 172).

 

In partnership with the business reform mayors the Chamber embarked on several growth initiatives with the State, such as diverting water to the Blue Mountain Reservoir and Dillon Lake into the city’s water system. They also lobbied to ensure effective access to Eisenhower’s 1956 new Interstate Highway Program. As originally proposed, the Interstate Highway Act stopped dead at Denver, limiting access to and from the West, as well as access into Colorado’s interior. Denver’s Mayor and Governor, working with Eisenhower, were able to obtain funding to build out I-70 to Salt Lake City—a victory for Denver reminiscent of the earlier railroad era. A final economic development initiative, commencing in the early 1960’s, Denver was chosen in 1970 by the USOC as America’s sole 1976 Olympics applicant.

 

While all this was going on, Denver kept annexing a hundred small bits of periphery. Between 1941 and 1974 Denver doubled its size through annexation. It did not abandon metropolitan planning, however. But that tool eventually proved, not only a failure, but instigated a profound and intense pushback from its not so grateful beneficiaries. The issue was water and its linkage to annexation. The thorn in the suburbs’ butt was the Denver Water Board. Ever since its 1918 formation, the Board had been chintzy in allocating scarce water resources to the hinterland. For a variety of good and bad reasons, the Board, appointed by Mayor Newton, reflecting his, the Chamber’s and real estate position, believed supplying suburban areas with water fueled suburban growth.

 

So in 1948 water was allocated only to those suburbs which in the judgment of the Water Board had adequate zoning and housing codes in place. The resentment of the suburbs, however, grew exponentially during the severe drought of the early fifties. Alleging it was necessary to preserve sufficient water resources for Denver, the Water Board further “blue-lined” water allocations to suburban areas. By 1954-1955 the blue-lined suburban areas were rationing water. Suburban counties rejected the joint development of trans-mountain water in 1954, and that forced Denver to go it alone at a jaw-dropping $115 million cost.

 

The blue-line allocation system was kept in place until 1960. By then, however, several suburbs (Littleton, Englewood, Westminster and Aurora—who joined forces with Colorado Springs instead) had decided to go it alone and develop their own water. By 1962, the four county Denver metro areas developed ten city water systems (in addition to Denver’s) and several dozen special water districts (Abbott, 1981, pp. 176-7).  The legacy of bitterness left by the water fights doomed most of the subsequent efforts to create regional service districts. In 1965, 1966, and 1967 Denver’s attempts to create regional government to administer six services failed in the state legislature.

 

Denver’s city-suburban break point came in 1973-1974. Two laws passed at that time, the Poundstone Amendment and the Boundary Control Commission, cemented Denver’s suburban autonomy. The story behind the Poundstone Amendment offers additional insight. Freda Poundstone reacted negatively when, in 1973, the Denver Supreme Court decided Denver must desegregate schools. The decision presumably drove more Denverites to the suburbs, and raised concerns by suburbanites who perceived themselves in danger of Denver annexation. Freda was one of those “concerned” suburbanites. With no political experience, she did her best imitation of Jane Jacobs, and convinced surrounding suburbs and the state legislature to approve legislation requiring voter consent of those to be annexed. Surprisingly, the shock to Denver’s citizens that Poundstone had effectively shut down Denver’s expansion forced Denver citizens to forge a new identity and start their own city revitalization.

 

Denver: Politics and Policy Systems

Denver presents yet another variation of a postwar economic development policy system, one which the local, “native”, although displaced from power in 1947, resisted until the mid-fifties the “growth” policies of the new business reformers. The native business elite (the “Seventeenth Street tycoons”) near the end of World War II, like Oklahoma City’s, was especially narrow—the widespread local perception was that a handful of key business leaders controlled the long-time (1923) mayor, Ben Stapleton and had done so since the 1920’s. Their knee-jerk reaction to the inevitable wartime growth and its associated problems was best summarized by Stapleton’s famous comment to a question concerning Denver’s wartime housing crisis: “If all these people would only go back where they came from, we wouldn’t have a housing shortage”.

 

The traditional business elite prospered greatly from Denver’s pre-war economic base which rested on white collar government employees working in the numerous regional headquarters of the state and federal governments, tourism, and extraction and export of raw materials. The almost feared an increase in manufacturing because its pollution threatened their environment, its workers brought unionism, and branch plant corporate leadership was unlikely to integrate with the native business elite. Aside from tourism, Denver’s traditional business leadership was sufficiently motivated to acquire the Lowry Air Force Base in 1938 and the Buckley Air Force base in 1943. In 1948 there had been 10,000 federal civilian employees in Denver. By 1961 the number was 23,000 and by 1975, 32,000^[1].

Click to access DenverSuburbsMPS.pdf

Their fear of corporate new comers was based on folk such as our friend, Henry Kaiser who during the war established the federally-owned Denver Ordinance Plant, employing more than a thousand workers. Abbott concurs: “It was modern carpetbaggers attracted to Denver by wartime who provided the initial impulses for change”. Outsiders captured leadership in banks (Elwood Brooks), and aggressively pushed downtown redevelopment (William Zeckendorf) and these outsiders were supported by the sympathetic Denver Post controlled by Palmer Hoyt formerly employed by the Portland Oregonian^[2].

By 1947, a tired and very vulnerable Ben Stapleton lost the election to James Quigg Newton, a thirty-five year old, Yale Law School, and former Supreme Court clerk to William O. Douglas—and a Navy veteran. Calling for change of all sorts, but especially attacking the city’s obviously declining appearance, economic vibrancy, and all too obvious cronyism. Newton held sway for two terms, and while unable to achieve charter reform (which was typical reform of western business reformers), his “Michigan Mafia” of imported professional municipal officials modernized and upgraded the City Hall bureaucracy and its operations.  The two mayors who followed Newton carried on the same traditions well into the 1960’s.

By the mid-1950 the traditional business elite lost control over the Denver Chamber. “Newton presided over a postwar generation of bankers, real estate brokers, merchants and small industrialists who (in the mid-1950’s), in concert with the chamber of commerce, sought growth at any price.”^[3] Under the new reform business leadership, the Chamber “began to produce booster literature of a sort unimaginable during the 1940’s”. “The Chamber and the Colorado Bureau of Tourism (established in 1937) began to place advertisements in national magazines extolling Colorado’s virtues as a vacation spot”. During these years, Colorado’s ski industry came into being; by 1975 there were thirty major ski areas in operation and dozens of ski equipment manufacturers and wholesalers selling their wares.^[4]

 

In partnership with the business reform mayors the Chamber during the middle and late fifties embarked on several important growth initiatives such as diverting water to the Blue Mountain Reservoir and Dillon Lake into the city’s water system. But their critical action was to ensure effective access to Eisenhower’s 1956 new Interstate Highway Program. As proposed, the Interstate Highway Act stopped dead at Denver, limited western access as well as access into Colorado’s interior. Denver’s Mayor and Governor, working with Eisenhower, were able to obtain funding to build out I-70 to Salt Lake City—a victory for Denver reminiscent of the earlier railroad era. A final economic development-related initiative commenced in the early 1960’s; after several years of effort, Denver was chosen by the USOC in 1970 as America’s sole 1976 Olympics applicant (1970 Denver won the IOC endorsement.

 

Denver’s Urban Renewal

Colorado enacted its urban renewal enabling legislation in 1958, but Denver began its efforts in 1955 when seventy-five local businessmen established Downtown Denver Incorporated (DDI). Almost immediately DDI contracted with Urban Land Institute to survey/analyze the downtown and prepare a report. In the next year, 176 firms formed the Downtown Denver Improvement Association whose core purpose was to lobby the state legislature for legislation to create an urban renewal authority.

 

When the state responded with the 1958 state enabling law, the City quickly established in that year the Denver Urban Renewal Authority^[5]. This was followed in 1961 by the formation of a public/private Downtown Denver Master Plan Committee—charged with writing the urban renewal master plan. Its report, Development Guide for Downtown Denver called for coordinated transportation infrastructure and redevelopment of the downtown core (the Skyline Project). In 1964, another private sector EDO, Forward Metro Denver was established to guide the Skyline Project through the approval and bond referendum process. But this steady, thoughtful approach to urban renewal did little to impress the voters. In 1964, they turned down a $8 million bond issue to finance Denver’s first CBD urban renewal project: the Skyline Renewal Project.

 

Mother Nature apparently was not happy about this. The 1965 ‘flood of the century’ took out much of the downtown and solidified the public consensus that action was needed. Not to take any chances, the City successfully lobbied the Johnson Administration to accept the construction of the Exhibition Hall as the local match for federal urban renewal dollars^[6], allowing the city to delete a bond issuance from the 1967 referendum. The voters approved the Skyline Project (sans bond issuance) by over 70%. Thirty-seven obsolete and deteriorated slum and blighted blocks of Denver’s downtown went under the bulldozer^[7]. Denver followed up with a second twenty-two block project, Cherry Creek. That project included facilities to house the Denver Community College, the Metropolitan State College, and the University of Colorado-Denver. The most controversial element of Cherry Creek, the Auraria neighborhood, required dislocation of its black and Chicano residents, and wholesale housing demolition. Voters in 1969, however, approved the bond issuance and residential opposition went for naught..

 

In its CBD redevelopment phase, DURA invested very little, certainly less than 2%, in residential neighborhoods and housing. The Agency received “strong support from city officials”. Even after the passage of the 1974 CDBG Act which ended urban renewal grants, DURA made the transition by contracting with the city’s recipient of CDBG funds, the Community Development Agency, to operate several CDA housing programs. “With two-thirds of its staff working on housing programs in the neighborhoods, [DURA’s] public focus was still concentrated on the downtown”. An important reason for DURA’s survival and downtown focus, was that the state of Colorado in 1968 had approved tax increment financing legislation specifically for Denver. By using TIF DURA was able to issue its own TIF bonds to finance its downtown redevelopment projects. DURA had made the transition from the Age of Urban Renewal to the 1980’s with its CBD mission pretty much intact, its political position quite solid and secure.

 

In 1981, DURA announced that it would redevelop nineteen blocks immediately adjacent to the CBD. Using its bonding authority, DURA wanted to entirely demolish eight blocks for condo development. The area did not precisely fit the legislative definition of blight, which guided DURA’s ability to act, and the business and middle class residents of these blocks exploded. They organized the Golden Triangle Association, fought back, lobbied city government. DURA readjusted some boundaries so to split off some corporate opposition, but it didn’t work. With over one hundred protestors at the meeting, the City Council overwhelmingly vetoed the project. In Denver, the Age of Urban Renewal was truly over only in November 1981. From that time on (early 1980’s) the Denver Urban Renewal Agency adjusted its mission, focusing more on TIF, affordable housing and neighborhoods—as well as downtown^[8].

 

 

Denver:

The Denver Planning Commission was an active agency. As early as 1939, it had put together the Upper Platte River Regional Planning Commission (three counties) to put some order on its suburban counties. But when a ten member Denver Planning Commission delegation to the Urban Land Institute conference at MIT came back home warning the befuddled local residents that a “sinister disease” of decentralization was about to hit their city, Denver went into high gear to cope with its suburbanization. Even by that point Denver suburban growth rates were five times the central city rate. Denver quickly enacted a housing code to preserve the city’s attractiveness and stem the flight to suburbs. Not wasting any time, Denver annexed five square miles between 1941 and 1946. By that time, however, the three counties in the Upper Platte River RPC pulled out—upset at the lack of sensitivity of City planners to their needs. Metropolitan planning had suffered its first setback.

 

The real thorn in the suburbs’ butt was the Denver Water Board. Ever since its 1918 formation, the Board had been chintzy in allocating scarce water resources to locations outside the city perimeter. For a variety of good and bad reasons, the Board, which was appointed by the mayor and reflected the priorities of the Chamber business and real estate elites, felt threatened that suburban growth could result from its supplying suburban areas with water. By the time the business reform mayor, Quigg Newton, got control in the late forties, the Water Board was fairly independent and unresponsive to his initiatives.

 

By 1948 water was allocated only to those suburbs which in the judgment of the Water Board had adequate zoning and housing codes in place. The resentment of the suburbs, however, grew exponentially during the severe drought of the early fifties. Alleging it was necessary to preserve sufficient water resources for Denver, the Water Board “blue-lined” water allocations to suburban areas. By 1954-1955 the blue-lined suburban areas were rationing water. Suburban counties rejected the joint development of trans-mountain water in 1954 and that forced Denver to go it alone at a jaw-dropping $115 million cost. The blue line allocation system was kept in place until 1960. By then, however, several suburbs (Littleton, Englewood, Westminster and Aurora—who joined forces with Colorado Springs instead) had decided to go it alone and develop their own water. By 1962, the four county Denver metro areas had developed ten city water systems (in addition to Denver’s) and several dozen special water districts^[9].

 

While all this was going on, Denver kept on annexing in a hundred small bits its periphery. Between 1941 and 1974 Denver doubled its size through annexation. It did not abandon metropolitan planning, however. But that tool was not at all successful. “The legacy of bitterness left by the water fights doomed most of the subsequent efforts to create regional service districts. In 1965, 1966, and 1967 Denver’s attempts to create regional government to administer six services failed in the state legislature. Sensing time was running out, and that the city was becoming politically isolated, Denver initiated a series of annexation efforts in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s … this land war brought on an overwhelming political reaction”^[10]—the Poundstone Amendment. All in all a tale reminiscent of that told in Chapter 3 by Dilworth Richardson about pre-1900 New York City suburbs, Denver had galvanized suburban opposition to Denver expansion^[11].

 

While outside the time period encompassed by this section, Denver’s city-suburban break point came in 1973-1974. Two laws passed at that time, the Poundstone Amendment and the Boundary Control Commission, cemented Denver’s suburban autonomy. The story behind the Poundstone Amendment offers additional insight into this development. Freda Poundstone reacted rather negatively when, in 1973, the Denver Supreme Court decided that Denver must desegregate its schools. The decision presumably drove more Denver citizens to the suburbs, but also had the effect of raising concerns by suburbanites who perceived themselves in danger of further Denver annexation. Freda was one of those concerned suburbanites. With no political experience, she did her best imitation of Jane Jacobs and convinced the surrounding suburbs and the state legislature to approve legislation which required the consent of the voters in the county in which an annexation was intended. Perhaps surprisingly, some in Denver believe the shock to Denver’s citizens that Poundstone had effectively shut down Denver’s expansion forced Denver citizens to look at themselves and forge a new identity and commence their own revitalization.

 

Denver

 

 

[1] Dennis R. Judd, “From Cowtown to Sunbelt City: Boosterism and Economic Growth in Denver”, in Susan S. Fainstein et al (Eds) Restructuring the City: the Political Economy of Urban Redevelopment (New York, Longman, 1983), p. 173.

[2] Carl Abbott, the New Urban America, op. cit., pp. 124-125.

[3] Lyle Dorsett, the Queen City: a History of Denver (Boulder, Pruett, 1977), p. 251.

[4] Dennis R. Judd, “From Cowtown to Sunbelt City: Boosterism and Economic Growth in Denver”, in Susan S. Fainstein et al (Eds) Restructuring the City: the Political Economy of Urban Redevelopment (New York, Longman, 1983), p. 172.

[5] DURA’s board was composed of a mixture of large corporate executives, downtown real estate interests and key banking leadership; Judd, From Cowtown to Sunbelt City, op. cit., p. 180.

[6] The same legislation allowed seven other cities to receive large urban renewal grants without local match. This legislation may have been urban renewal’s largest pork barrel financing. Harry Byrd ( Norfolk) put it together.

[7] A significant portion of the Skyline Project remained unfinished, most used for more than a decade for parking lots. Private sector investment in Denver’s skyline was slow in coming. Still taxes paid to the city from these blocks totaled $181,000 in 1967—a decade later (1977) nearly $2.5 million dollars were paid to the city. There was very little relocation (presumably SROs largely) involved in the Skyline Project. (Judd, From Cowtown to Sunbelt City, op. cit., p.180). In 1972 an $87 million bond was approved for police/fire, libraries, a sports stadium and the Center for Performing Arts. This massive public facility and improvement financing did generate an equivalent private sector investment—banks, headquarters, hotels and lots of office buildings. Much of the downtown street light and utilities were installed with this bond issuance. By 1982, the total post-Skyline private investment in the CBD exceed $2 billion (Judd, p. 181).

[8] http://www.renewdenver.org/assets/files/50thAnniversaryReport.pdf; Denver Urban Renewal Authority, Fifty Years of Revitalizing Denver (2008)

[9] Carl Abbott, the New Urban America, op. cit., pp. 176-177.

[10] Dennis Judd, “From Cowtown to Sunbelt City” in Susan Fainstein et al, Restructuring the City,  op. cit., p.187.

[11] Richardson Dilworth, The Urban Origins of Suburban Autonomy (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2005)