Colorado Springs

Policy Cut

 

Colorado Springs:

 Located ninety miles south of Denver, Colorado Springs (1940 population 37,500) was a none-too-prosperous western second tier city whose economic base, poorly connected to the rest of the nation, rested on extraction/mining and health-based tourism. The war offered the city and its business leaders the opportunity to diversify the local economy and better connect the area to the rest of the world—by employing the attracting government investment strategy. The Chamber and affluent local businessmen raised funds, assembled without cost a thirty-five thousand acre parcel, formed a Military Affairs Committee in the Chamber, and sent a delegation to Washington to lobby for military facilities. They were successful and two bases (Camp Carson with 30,000 troops and a small Army air base) were acquired; together they injected an estimated $5 million per month into the local economy[1].

 

At war’s end, the Colorado Springs Chamber was confronted with the issue of if, and how, the local economy could be sustained—if not built upon. The Cold War followed World War II degenerated into another “hot” war in Korea provided ample opportunity to continue the attraction of government investment strategy[2]—which the Chamber did. Again, successes followed from local initiatives and not only were the two World War II assets expanded, but two new military-related assets were acquired–and they were plums. The Air Defense Command (a ‘hole in a mountain’ in which the nation’s defense command center operates) and the Air Force Academy both settled in Colorado Springs. There was competition for these facilities among other cities. Both assets proved to be excellent long-term investments for the local economic base. In 1986, the Chamber reported that 61,000 people (not military) were employed at the various military assets[3]. Also several key defense-related industries established a meaningful presence (Loral, GTE, Government Systems, Litton, Martin Marietta, and TRW Defense)[4]. Colorado Spring’s population increased by 54% in the fifties, 92% during the sixties, and 59% during the seventies—reaching nearly 215,000 in 1980.

 

Markusen asserts that a major reason for these successes was the Chamber cultivated on a personal basis those relevant military decision-making (a recreation spa which attracted generals and even President Eisenhower) and through an image of the area’s “military friendliness”. “We have one of the most outstanding military-civilian relationships in the nation” they asserted[5]. I might also add two other factors: (1) in 1949 the Secretary of Defense formed a committee to prepare a report on “a general system of education for the Army, Navy and Air Force’ and its co-chairs were the Presidents of Columbia University (Dwight Eisenhower) and the University of Colorado (Robert Steams); (2) in 1954 when the location was decided, both branches of Congress were Republican-controlled and the Chair of the Senate Conference Committee was Colorado’s Robert Millikin who also was Chair of the Senate Finance Committee. It might also be mentioned that the Chair of the House’s Committee on Science and Aeronautics (space program) was Colorado Republican John Chenoweth. I suspect it does help if one’s city has friends in high places.

 

As I am fond of saying, however, all good things come to an end. The end of the Cold War during the 1990’s led to profound military cutbacks in personnel, equipment and downsizing of facilities. The overdependence of Colorado Springs on the military, which had worked so well for more than four decades, came to an end. During the 1990’s the city would need to revisit the industry sector configuration of its economic base. This is a story for a future chapter, but at this point it does permit us to sally forth by introducing a new feature to our attraction of federal government investment strategy—“recruit and parlay”. Markusen suggested this derivative strategy, defining it as a process “whereby cities can transform assets recruited for one era into inputs for another … that localities can then parlay into another round of recruitment or homegrown initiatives”.[6] In her view, Colorado Springs during the nineties would indeed “recruit and parlay” successfully and re-jigger their economic base to generate new prosperity and jobs.

 

[1] Mia Gray and Ann R. Markusen, “Colorado Springs: a Military-Anchored City in Transition”, in Ann R. Markusen, Yong-Sook Lee, and Sean DiGiovanna (Eds), Second Tier Cities: Rapid Growth Beyond the Metropolis (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 313-315.

[2] See Chapter 11, section on “Industrial Decentrallization

[3] Mia Gray and Ann R. Markusen, “Colorado Springs: a Military-Anchored City in Transition”, op. cit., p. 316.

[4] Mia Gray and Ann R. Markusen, “Colorado Springs: a Military-Anchored City in Transition”, op. cit., p. 316.

[5] Mia Gray and Ann R. Markusen, “Colorado Springs: a Military-Anchored City in Transition”, op. cit., p. 315.

[6] Mia Gray and Ann R. Markusen, “Colorado Springs: a Military-Anchored City in Transition”, op. cit., p. 312.

 

 

Colorado Springs–Second Tier City and Boomburb

The imperceptible (at least in 1990) shift away from economic development policy based on modernization, replacement of infrastructure and addressing the community development needs of impacted industrial central city populations created a conceptual vacuum into which new economic development priorities asserted themselves. Instead of focusing economic development on “revitalization”, an increased emphasis was placed on “growth”. Of course, growth made a great deal of sense if your past was minimal or had “played out”. Such was the situation of Colorado Springs in the 1930’s.

 

Colorado Springs got going after the Civil War and like many Western cities of the time, its economic life rested upon extractive industries such as gold, coal, railroads, and in Colorado Spring’s unique case, tuberculosis sanatoriums. From such charming beginnings, fortunes were made–and lost. By the time of the Great Depression Colorado Springs was “in deep trouble. With a population of around thirty thousand, almost 20% of the housing stock lay empty”. And the Chamber of Commerce and private sector “boosters” sprang into action. Private sector funds were raised, a thirty-five thousand acre parcel of land assembled, and off went the Chamber’s Military Affairs Committee to Washington D.C.^[1]

 

As described earlier in our Fortress California discussion, many Western cities sensed both the inevitability of World War II and the necessity of establishing a strong (and potentially profitable) military presence in the Pacific West. In economic development, like horseshoes, “close enough” was good enough after Pearl Harbor to land two military facilities: a small airport and Fort Carson which shortly housed over thirty thousand soldiers. Recognizing a good thing when they saw it, and realizing that good things never last for very long, the Chamber anticipated the need to develop and pursue a postwar strategy to build upon its military assets.

 

So the Chamber diligently adjusted to the one-third reduction in postwar military personnel at Fort Carson by seizing upon the decision to separate the Air Force from the Army and the Air Force’s consequent need to establish its own military academy. In 1954, the Eisenhower administration approved Colorado Springs as the site for the Air Force Academy (its principal competitors were Alton, Illinois and Lake Geneva Wisconsin). Republican Senator Millikin was chairman of the Senate Finance committee and the Republican Conference at the time, but the Curmudgeon is sure that had nothing to do with the decision. He just thought he’d mention it. Markusen stressed instead the “military friendly image” projected by the Chamber which led and coordinated a community-wide campaign to ensure community-wide friendliness and receptiveness to the military^[2]. The community’s seeming support for the military and all things military  impressed the federal military decision-makers and prompted a favorable decision from the Air Force. Senator Millikin was no doubt, also pleased.

 

Markusen correctly observes that the Academy possessed several assets or characteristics which were very useful to economic development. First, obviously the Academy is a four year college-university and this future boomburb now had acquired a national educational institution. Second, the focus of the Air Force, engineering and technological warfare, was a natural compliment to private manufacturing and technological expertise and a possible magnet for investment by defense industry firms. In a future period which would glorify gazelles, technology, knowledge-based  and advanced skills, remaking Colorado Springs into a highly specialized college town would bring special benefits. Thirdly, as we now know all too well (BRAC–to be discussed in the next chapter), military institutions can be closed–but the likelihood of closing the Academy would always be pretty remote. More to Markusen’s point, however, is that the success with attracting the Academy was leveraged by future community efforts to acquire still more Air Force and military-related investment. In essence, Markusen makes the point that yes attraction-recruitment can work, but recruitment candidates ought to possess assets and attributes central to a wider economic development strategy, and that equally important, a pivotal point of recruitment is to leverage one attraction success  to subsequent successes. Attraction is not a one-off, catch what one can, economic development strategy.

 

Accordingly, Colorado Springs was also able to recruit NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) guaranteed to Colorado Springs access to the most sophisticated communications network in the world and attracted its own share of knowledge-based expertise and defense firm locations. By the mid 1980’s, military related jobs totaled 61,000. The fall of communism and the end of the cold war in the early 1990’s, however, rocked once again the military dependent recruitment strategy of Colorado Springs. By 1995, military related personnel had plummeted to 41,000. This prompted a rather wide-scale close down of several large private defense firm facilities (which is what inspired Littleton to invent “economic gardening” as a counter economic development strategy).

 

Large defense firms such as Loral, GTE Government Systems, Litton, Martin Marietta, and TRW Defense all went through severe cuts or even closed shop. In 1989 there were 70 defense contractors in the Springs employing roughly 9,000 employees, of which only three small firms were locally headquartered. Five years later there were only 61 firms employing 6506…^[3]

 

This Colorado Springs military attraction strategy increasingly seems to resemble a roller-coaster ride. Volatility is obvious to us and the volatility was obvious to folks in Colorado Springs as well. Colorado Springs needed to diversify its economic base; there was an economic business cycle of which all are aware–Colorado Springs had learned there were “political” and “military” cycles as well.

“Local boosters” had earlier understood their precarious dependence on military employment and even before decline had set it initiated an attraction strategy throughout the seventies and eighties. They developed a “new recruitment strategy, this time aimed at electronic branch plants”^[4] (shades of BAWI). BAWI, despite its notoriety, was largely a failure; Southern branch plant recruitment was a national pariah which had triggered a hegemonic regional reaction lasting decades. Why did Colorado Springs believe a branch plant strategy could work? According to Markusen, Colorado Springs had two positive strengths in its favor:

 

First, the dramatic military-based growth of the local economy had enabled them to climb beyond a minimum threshold size. Colorado Springs could now offer substantial private and public infrastructure, a respectable business services sector, and a willing and diverse labor force to prospective employers. Second, the congestion and cost pressures in the booming high-tech centers of Southern California and Boston created a general interest among large corporations.^[5]

 

Seizing the initiative, “a group of private-sector developers took the lead”, prepared a plan-“manifesto” A Program for Quality Economic Development, prepared and implemented a targeted attraction campaign of specific firms, land banked and shovel-readied sites, constructed “spec” buildings, and launched an image campaign to remake Colorado Springs from “a small, isolated, wintery, Cowboy and Indian tourist town to a high-technology center”. Moreover, local economic developers worked alongside and leveraged the community assets which had been created by the military economic base…

 

In approaching outside firms, local boosters distinguished the city from others by the size and productivity of the labor force, arguing that military related hires (as well as the military spouse labor market) in particular make good workers…^[6]

 

Markusen cites that the campaign was quite successful^[7], recruiting manufacturing firms in an era of deindustrialization as well as technology firms, so that through the 1990’s Colorado Springs had in a significant way diversified its economic base. But “shades of BAWI”, the branch plant strategy collapsed along with the military cuts and the recession of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Plant closedowns were substantial as were job losses; the local housing industry went into recession. Many branch facilities moved away. Diversification was not a magic bullet preventing decline in economic bad times.

 

But if we have learned anything, we would expect that in the midst of this economic morass, the private sector and economic developers of Colorado Springs would spring once again into action. Over the next decade or so, “the city redeployed its assets in yet another direction, marketing its character and conservative culture”. As it had in the past, local private groups working with city economic developers assembled forty-seven acres on a closed Air Force base, a local foundation largely offset moving costs and in 1977 the Olympic Training Center was opened and in 1978, the USOC relocated. Using its cultural and ideological attributes, Colorado Springs had landed the headquarters for the U.S. Olympic Committee and with it in the following decades a considerable number of sports NGOs also relocated. Colorado Springs’ goal was to become America’s “Amateur Sports Capital”. In the early nineties and following, Colorado Springs, again marketing its culture, endeavored, reasonably successfully, to become “the Christian Capital” of the nation.^[8]

 

In our case study of Colorado Springs we have attempted to deal with several topics. First, we have demonstrated how one boomburb grew over several decades. Second, we have described how Colorado Springs has adopted a military (government) recruitment strategy which over the years has served as a core element in its economic base. Thirdly, we have further presented Markusen’s important insights as to how both recruitment-attraction and the military-government centered approach to economic growth has worked in Colorado Springs. All these are of value. Subtly however, we have also described the long-term economic development adventures of a suburb. One would think in this telling of a well-known city, that we were describing a historical and well known central city. We are not, of course, and that was an important point. Suburbs during and after the 1980’s could amass populations larger than central cities. The long-standing American hierarchy of cities was changing.

 

[1] We are indebted to Ann Markusen for this excellent synopsis of the long-term history of Colorado Spring’s economic development. See Ann R. Markusen, Yong-Sook Lee, and Sean DiGiovanna (eds), Second Tier Cities: Rapid Growth beyond the Metropolis (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 33-332.

[2] Termed “stylizing of culture”, Markusen is arguing in favor of a larger concept–the community (i.e. Chamber’s) targeting of a military recruitment as a base for sustained economic development. This stylizing of culture was a prominent aspect in the community’s attempt to influence the Air Force decision. The Curmudgeon, as the reader might suspect, believes that the Chamber also anchored its campaigned for the Academy around its Congressional and Senatorial delegation. If a community is to embrace a strategy of attracting federal government institutions, its Washington-based political elite is the place to start–and finish.

[3] Markusen, Second Tier Cities, op. cit. p. 316.

[4] Markusen, Second Tier Cities, op. cit. p. 317.

[5]Markusen, Second Tier Cities, op. cit. p. 317.

[6] Markusen, Second Tier Cities, op. cit. p. 318.  It also ought to be mentioned that low cost wage, associated with Colorado’s modified right to work laws were important elements of this campaign. Also, high tech firms recruited in earlier years were also participants in the attraction campaign.

[7] By the mid-1980’s the QED folk alleged attracting 170 firms and 17,000 employees (p. 319)

[8] Markusen, Second Tier Cities, op. cit. pp. 321-328.

 

===========

Colorado Springs:

 Ninety miles south of Denver, Colorado Springs’s 1940 population of 37,500 suggested a none-too-prosperous western second/third tier city. Her economic base, poorly connected to the rest of the nation, rested on extraction/mining and health-based tourism. War offered the city and its business leaders an opportunity to diversify the local economy—by attracting government investment. The Chamber and affluent local businessmen raised funds, assembled a thirty-five thousand acre parcel, formed a Chamber Military Affairs Committee, and sent a delegation to Washington to lobby for military facilities. They were successful; two bases (Camp Carson (30,000 troops) and a small Army air base). Together they injected an estimated $5 million per month into the local economy (Gray & Markusen, 1999, pp. 313-5).

At war’s end, the Colorado Springs Chamber was confronted with the issue of if, and how, the local economy could be sustained—if not built upon. The Cold War followed World War II degenerated into another “hot” war in Korea provided ample opportunity to continue the attraction of government investment strategy [2]—which the Chamber did. Again, successes followed from local initiatives and not only were the two World War II assets expanded, but two new military-related assets were acquired–and they were plums. The Air Defense Command (a ‘hole in a mountain’ in which the nation’s defense command center operates) and the Air Force Academy both settled in Colorado Springs. There was competition for these facilities among other cities. Both assets proved to be excellent long-term investments for the local economic base. In 1986, the Chamber reported that 61,000 people (not military) were employed at the various military assets [3]. Also several key defense-related industries established a meaningful presence (Loral, GTE, Government Systems, Litton, Martin Marietta, and TRW Defense)[4]. Colorado Spring’s population increased by 54% in the fifties, 92% during the sixties, and 59% during the seventies—reaching nearly 215,000 in 1980.

 

Markusen asserts that a major reason for these successes was the Chamber cultivated on a personal basis those relevant military decision-making (a recreation spa which attracted generals and even President Eisenhower) and through an image of the area’s “military friendliness”. “We have one of the most outstanding military-civilian relationships in the nation” they asserted [5]. I might also add two other factors: (1) in 1949 the Secretary of Defense formed a committee to prepare a report on “a general system of education for the Army, Navy and Air Force’ and its co-chairs were the Presidents of Columbia University (Dwight Eisenhower) and the University of Colorado (Robert Steams); (2) in 1954 when the location was decided, both branches of Congress were Republican-controlled and the Chair of the Senate Conference Committee was Colorado’s Robert Millikin who also was Chair of the Senate Finance Committee. It might also be mentioned that the Chair of the House’s Committee on Science and Aeronautics (space program) was Colorado Republican John Chenoweth. I suspect it does help if one’s city has friends in high places.

 

As I am fond of saying, however, all good things come to an end. The end of the Cold War during the 1990’s led to profound military cutbacks in personnel, equipment and downsizing of facilities. The overdependence of Colorado Springs on the military, which had worked so well for more than four decades, came to an end. During the 1990’s the city would need to revisit the industry sector configuration of its economic base. This is a story for a future chapter, but at this point it does permit us to sally forth by introducing a new feature to our attraction of federal government investment strategy—“recruit and parlay”. Markusen suggested this derivative strategy, defining it as a process “whereby cities can transform assets recruited for one era into inputs for another … that localities can then parlay into another round of recruitment or homegrown initiatives”.[6] In her view, Colorado Springs during the nineties would indeed “recruit and parlay” successfully and re-jigger their economic base to generate new prosperity and jobs.

[1] Mia Gray and Ann R. Markusen, “Colorado Springs: a Military-Anchored City in Transition”, in Ann R. Markusen, Yong-Sook Lee, and Sean DiGiovanna (Eds), Second Tier Cities: Rapid Growth Beyond the Metropolis (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 313-315.

[2] See Chapter 11, section on “Industrial Decentralization

[3] Mia Gray and Ann R. Markusen, “Colorado Springs: a Military-Anchored City in Transition”, op. cit., p. 316.

[4] Mia Gray and Ann R. Markusen, “Colorado Springs: a Military-Anchored City in Transition”, op. cit., p. 316.

[5] Mia Gray and Ann R. Markusen, “Colorado Springs: a Military-Anchored City in Transition”, op. cit., p. 315.

[6] Mia Gray and Ann R. Markusen, “Colorado Springs: a Military-Anchored City in Transition”, op. cit., p. 312.

At war’s end, the Chamber confronted the issue of if, and how, the local economy could be sustained—if not expanded. As Cold War degenerated into the Korean “hot” war an opportunity opened up to continue the government investment strategy—which the Chamber did. Again, successes followed from local initiatives. Not only were the two World War II assets expanded, but two new military-related assets were acquired–and they were plums. The Air Defense Command (a ‘hole in a mountain’ in which the nation’s defense command center operates) and the Air Force Academy both settled in Colorado Springs. There was intense competition for the Air Force Academy among other cities, but the city’s congressional delegation was strategically placed.

In 1949 the Secretary of Defense formed a committee on “a general system of education for the Army, Navy and Air Force’; its co-chairs were Presidents of Columbia University (Dwight Eisenhower) and the University of Colorado (Robert Steams); In 1954 when the location was decided, both branches of Congress were Republican- the Chair of the Senate Conference Committee was Colorado’s Robert Millikin (also Chair of the Finance Committee). Chair of House’s Committee on Science and Aeronautics (space program) was Colorado Republican John Chenoweth.

So, by 1986, an estimated 61,000 people (non-military) were employed at various Colorado Spring’s military assets. Equally important, several defense-related industries established a meaningful presence in the area (Loral, GTE, Government Systems, Litton, Martin Marietta, and TRW Defense). Colorado Spring’s population increased by 54% in the 1950’s, 92% during the 60’s, 59% during the 1970’s, reaching 215,000 in 1980. A major reason for success, Markusen asserts was the Chamber which cultivated, on a personal basis, relevant military decision-makers (using a recreation spa in which generals and even President Eisenhower bathed) and developing an image of the area’s “military friendliness”. “We have one of the most outstanding military-civilian relationships in the nation” they asserted (Gray & Markusen, 1999, pp. 315-6).