Freddie and the Dreamers: Denver’s Struggle to Create a Great City! Denver is on the brink of becoming a great city or a deteriorating blighted core in the center of a golden suburban apple....If the city is to survive as a desirable place to live, work, and play....enlightened, imaginative, vigorous leadership is critical. - Sharon Sherman, Denver Post, April 11, 1982” When Peiia took office in 1983, he didn’t just walk in the doors of City Hall, he flung them wide open, The aging white middle-class men who had run the city for decades were swept aside by a multi-tiered cadre of yuppies headed by the energetic Hispanic lawyer who summarized the city’s frustrations, and it’s dreams ina single phrase: “Imagine a great city.” - Michelle P. Fulcher, Denver Post, June 7, 1987° ‘A time for change had come in Denver. With a single phrase, “Imagine a great city," Federico Pefia had encapsulated his hopes and dreams for the ailing city. This statement, made in an address to the City Council in November of 1982, would come to define everything that the future mayor’s administration and coalition stood for. Early in 1982 Denver's economy suffered a huge blow with the loss of energy capital, business growth had stagnated, but the unplanned downtown building expansion that stemmed from the once booming oil economy of the 1970s continued to expand. The following year in the summer of 1983, the people of Denver would vote for their mayor. Their decision would help to determine whether the once booming city would become ruined with abandonment and disuse, or rebound from the economic setbacks it faced, and grow into a great city. " Delshon, Gary. “Mayor Peiia Masters the High Profile.” Denver Post 6 May 1984: E1+. 2 Sherman, Sharon. “Who Should Run in Denver?” Denver Post 11 Apr. 1982: Al+. * Fulcher, Michelle P. “City Hall Summary Judgement, 1987.” Denver Post 7 June 1987: FI “Homby, William, “Bold New Leadership.” Denver Post 22 June 1983: B2+Elected as the 41% mayor of Denver in the summer of 1983, Federico Pefia had an enthusiastic vision of how great the city could be. Filled with pomp and circumstance, his inauguration embodied his time in office. It illustrated the high profile that Pefia held in the city that had begun several months ago in the local media. The Denver Post, ever- present through his election, ran a front-page article that described the festive proceedings: “Federico Peita became mayor of Denver Friday in an elaborate and festive inauguration that signals the most dramatic city hall shift in 36 years. ‘The inauguration ‘was perhaps Denver's biggest and most elaborate since Mayor Robert Speer was sworn into office in 1904. Past inaugurals were low-key, sparsely populated events.” Pefia’s inaugural represented his style of government in its enthusiasm and its message of hope for the ailing city. The inaugural also symbolized the openness that Pefia hoped to bring to local government. After being swom into office in front of an estimated 2,500 people, the new mayor proceeded to “mingle with the crowd,” before riding in the inaugural parade in front of thousands more on the 16" Street Mall. The mayor then flew by helicopter to parties held by neighborhood organizations at six different Denver parks, and drew the day to a close with a dance at Currigan Hall held by his campaign organization.’ Mayor Pefia created his electoral coalition from a variety of different groups in Denver to defeat the incumbent, Mayor Bill McNichols. Peja’s electoral coalition consisted of the elderly, labor unions, the Denver Area Labor Federation, the National Organization for Women (N.O.W.), prominent Denver business leaders, and the Hispanic community. In the May 1983 primary Peiia easily defeated Mayor McNichols, winning ” Delshon, Gary. “Thousands Join in Festive Inaugural for 41 Mayor.” Denver Post 2 Iulyl983: AL‘, * Yack, Patrick. “Peiia Charts Strategy Using Voter Statistics.” Denver Post 6 Mar. 1983: B+.a land owning black population, and a base of conservative Latinos. “To become dominant in urban polities,” Mollenkopf states, “a coalition must not only win lections...but must convert electoral successes into a governing coalition.” To build this governing coalition requires forming relationships with business and civic leaders, “whose cooperation is necessary for carrying out policy.” To stay in power it is a necessity for the coalition to “manage the tensions that inevitably arise out of the differences of interest between its electoral base and its allies in governance.”"! Mollenkopf demonstrated with the Koch coalition in New York during the late 1970s and 1980s, that even during times of economic prosperity, leaders must work together ot they will ultimately fail. Part of Koch's strategy for governing New York involved bringing together “a pro-growth coalition of real-estate development interests and other corporate elites.”'? 4 Phoenix in the Ashes discusses strategy of working with local business interests and, “{p|romoting private development was an obvious way to bring together... otherwise disparate clements.” Mollenkopf considers establishing a pro-growth coalition and working with local business important, but cites Lincoln Steffens observation that, “dominant coalitions needed to develop a grass-roots base of legitimacy as well as support from corporate interests." To remain in power and exert significant influence over a city, the governing coalition needed to bring together as many influential groups as possible and successfully integrate their various concerns. * Mollenkopf, John H. A Phoenix in the Ashes: The Rise and Fall of the Koch Coalition in New York City Politics. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) 5 ® Mollenkopf, John H. A Phoente in the Ashes: The Rise and Fall of the Koch Coalition in New York City, Politics. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) 19, 'S Mollenkopf, John H. A Phoenix inthe Ashes: The Rise and Fall of the Koch Coalition in New York City Politics. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) 41To promote growth in Atlanta city leaders sought to bring in revenue building enterprises, a move that Denver would later emulate. Stone discusses Atlanta’s growth strategy, which included bringing a major league baseball team to town and creating a civic center with an auditorium and exhibition hall. The governing regime hoped to use this strategy to turn Atlanta into a national city.'° Atlanta and Denver faced difficulties common to most cities across the nation. Stone discusses the “same basic challenges (metropolitan decentralization, changing race relations, and mobile capital), and the ingredients for regime building (private ownerships of business and popular control of local government) [that] were the same for all [cities].”"” To resolve the predicament of an over-developed city, and to fight urban flight, Denver’s governing coalition would strive to find a way to stimulate growth in a stagnant economy. In an effort to alleviate the problems in that affected downtown Denver, Mayor Pefia created his own ‘regime’. He established ties in the business community in an effort to bring business to downtown and surrounded himself with an administration designed to bring as many different members of the community into the governing process as possible. Peiia also ran a government open to the public and encouraged the citizens of Denver to become more involved in his effort to create a better city to live in, Denver entered the 1980s with a future in energy and a downtown that continued to expand to meet the needs of the continued business growth. Rising oil prices across the globe made the development of the oil shale reserves in Western Colorado a profitable solution to the oil shortage that faced the country. As development began in "Stone, Clarence N. Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta 1946-1988, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989) 60. "Stone, Clarence N. Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta 1946-1988. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989) 1601of Oxford Ansco and one of North America’s leading core city developers stated, “If | were ...Denver, I would be disturbed about the dissipation of retailing downtown. There is no city in America that has a strong downtown except the ones that have strong retail.” ‘The focus on the creation of sky-serapers and office space in Denver created an economy dependent on oil. With retail space dwindling and rent prices steadily on the rise, retail stores had begun to move to the suburbs. In the transition, the city began to lose its sales tax revenue generated by the retail trade.”" Distress over this unplanned growth in Denver quickly became an issue. When oil prices dropped in the spring of 1982, the production of oil shale became too expensive; oil companies began their move out of the Colorado market. This left a huge vacuum in downtown Denver, and with the country in the grip of a recession, filling the void would be difficult. In an attack on MeNichols during his mayoral campaign, Peita stated, “I think people are concerned the city seems to be drifting along with growth that doesn’t seem to have any rational, logical, consistent pattern to it.” The future mayor envisioned the creation of an open government and the current administration embodied all the problems that ailed the city. ‘The decisions made about Denver’s growth for the last fourteen years had been directed largely by business with little input from the city government. Peifa envisioned a different role for the mayor's office. He believed that crafting a coalition of Denver's business and civic leaders to direct growth in the city would most benefit downtown.” ‘The McNichols administration led Denver through a time of economic prosperity, With no real pressure to direct the city toward any specifie goal. In 1981 the city ran out 2» Pitts, Gail. “City’s Retailing Less Crucial?” Denver Post 26 July 1981: 37+ ® Krieger, Dave. “Peiia Launches Harsh Attack Against Mayor” Rocky Mountain News [Denver] 14 July 1982: 6+.in the economic atmosphere in Denver and the collapse of the MeNichols administration brought about the opportunity for a change in leadership. MeNichols also contended with problems in the local media, which compounded his predicament as Denver’s economic situation began to decline. “In recent years,” the Denver Post said, “McNichols was seemingly always battling with the news media as reporters wrote about secret deals, bad contracts, and troublesome appointees in his administration.” Both of Denver's newspapers had come under new management and, “[tJhe crescendo of bad press had reached a fever pitch in the last two years.” McNichols had lost the “editors and publishers who had been chummy with [him] and were reluctant to look critically at his administration.””* In the years leading to the election, McNichols image began to tarnish in the local media as Petia slowly became a larger presence. Articles discussing the contender crept closer and closer to the front page. In July 1983, Denver elected its first Hispanic mayor, Federico Pefia, and replaced the apathetic MeNichols administration with an energetic leader optimistic of the future. Now in office, Pefia endeavored to bring the government to the people, to find out what his constituents wanted, and involve them in the process. Early in his candidacy, Pefia discussed his plan for a city administration open to its constituents and his misgivings about the way that the previous administration had been run, “That’s the general concern about this city,” Pefia said, “that everything is done quietly. You don’t know until something happens. That’s the opposite way in which I believe government should be operated. Things ought to be done openly, so people know what exactly you're doing,” Furthermore, Pefia wanted to “put together the kind of coalition in the city in a way that, nobody {had] ever done before.” He dreamt of a coalition that would provide the * Delshon, Gary. “Events Kept Piling up on Mayor Bill.” Denver Post 18 May 1983: Al+. uoutsourced cases and save the city money. Additional measures implemented included “tighter accounting of city lawyer's time to make sure they are not used frivolously by other city agencies and to avoid budget overruns that have plagued the city attorney’s office for years.”** The members of Pefia’s governing coalition would have to help the new mayor cut costs and save the city money wherever possible in the tough economic times ahead. Mayor Peiia now needed to find someone to fill the position of Safety Manager to resolve problems of communication between the mayor’s office and the police and fire departments that had plagued the previous administration. Shortly after Kaplan’s appointment, Pefia named John Simonet to the position of Safety Manager of Denver. The inefficiency and miscommunication that plagued the McNichols administration had to come to an end. Denver's Police, Sheriff, and Fire departments all answered to this civil authority. Simonet had held the post for a few months under the MeNichols administration, just prior to Pefia’s election. As a part of the MeNichols administration for only a short time, “{t}he new mayor was careful to point out that Simonet was not part of the past problems in city government.” Poor communication afflicted the previous administration and the new mayor stated that “[m]any of the problems that have plagued the Denver Police Department in the past decade have flared up because the police chief ‘ignored the safety manager and went directly to the mayor.””? While this arrangement ‘marginally functioned under the previous administration, Simonet’ appointment promised to solve the problem of poor communication between the fire, police and * Delshon, Gary. “Peiia Names Kaplan City Attorney.” Denver Post 7 Aug, 1983: DI2*. » Parmenter, Cindy, and Sharon Stone, “Boss” Simonet to Head Safety." Denver Post 11 Aug. 1983; A= 13construction, school upkeep, and other necessary maintenance concerns. Previous administrations had used this fund to offset any budget shortfalls and transferred money ut into the city’s General Fund, but Pefia’s administration made it inviolable and for capital improvements only. By creatively reorganizing the budget and tightening it up in several areas, Pefia had more flexibility to increase funds to departments that had been cut in previous years.*" In an effort to streamline the city’s internal costs and create a more visible government, Mayor Pefia issued a request for a report on the efficiency of the Denver government, Released in March of 1984, the study comprised 529 pages that contained 383 recommendations, a product of months of review by eighty business and community leaders. The report contained “many harsh findings about city agencies.” The most pertinent and obvious finding of the report, which the mayor acknowledged, was that the “city government is badly out of step with the times, inefficient, and does little to enhance the moral of it’s employees.” Mayor Pefia urged the public to remember the purpose of the study: to find room for improvement by finding the problems that existed in city government. The report, designed to save the city money in the long run, revealed many instances where the city wasted much needed funds. It listed problems with public institutions that included the debilitating effects that “cronyism and nepotism” had on parks and public works. Also included in the report was “one of the biggest drains on Denver's treasury each year,” the Denver General Hospital, which “has been run by a management team that is inefficient and unaccountable.”*” Mayor Pejia » Weiss, Suzanne. “Pefla’s $318 Million Budget in Balance.” Rocky Mountain News (Denver) 3 Sept. 1983: 7+, * Delshon, Gary. “Peila Study Finds Cronyism, Inefficiency; Overhaul Urged." Denver Post 14 Mat. 1984:AL4to have done during his fourteen years in office.”** Pefia’s coalition relied on working with the leaders of downtown business and involving them in the process of government, but included only a few groups that represented the civie community. In order to expand the budget in the future and to realize “a great city,” Pefia believed that Denver needed to increase sales tax revenue. Massive construction during the last eight years had destroyed the retail trade in Denver, which brought in the bulk of the city’s revenues in sales taxes. One of Mayor Peiia’s strategies to bring growth back to downtown Denver involved bringing in retail stores, preferably a large retail store. One big retail store would help to lure other businesses back to downtown, but would have a large initial cost associated with it. Mayor Peila asked Bernard Friedman, a professor of urban planning and studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to address Denver’s Downtown Planning Committee. After analyzing the problem, Friedman told the committee that “[MJajor department stores, which cities covet for their sales taxes, among other reasons, won’t locate downtown without financial aid because land is too expensive.” It could cost Denver up to $30 million to bring a major department store to downtown. In his address Friedman said that “If [department stores are] paying $5 a square foot at the Aurora Mall and twenty times that downtown, you have to make up the gap for anything to work.” Also addressing the committee, Neil Goldschmidt, former Mayor of Portland, Oregon, discussed the relationship requited of the mayor in his pursuit of retailers for the downtown: “There’s no replacement for the one-on-one contact between the mayor and the retailers. You have to make it work and prove it to them. And if you do that, and you get the banking community and other corporate leadership in behind [the mayor] there will be an explosion [downtown] and * Delshon, Gary. “Twenty-seven Named to Plan Downtown Growth.” Denver Post 10 July 1984:A1+. 7Denver business leaders and the mayor conducted a presentation for seventy-five Chicago business executives. Their aim did not involve stealing business away from the Chicago area, but attempted to attract businesses to the Rocky Mountain area that had previous plans of expansion or re-location. In his speech, Pefia sold Denver as a city with “renewed excitement and enthusiasm.” He portrayed the people of Denver as “excited about not only imagining a great city, but creating one,” and characterized himself as a ”* The Denver “young and energetic mayor. ..bringing a breath of fresh air to...Denver. Post frequently characterized Denver as a young, vigorous city. The new mayor embraced this image, and he and his coalition would use it again in attempts to attract, business to the city. Mayor Peiia not only sought to bring business to Denver to fill the empty skyscrapers downtown, but to build a new Convention Center downtown to bring revenue in through the business generated by traveling convention goers. The mayor also believed that a new center would create jobs and improve the fiscal health of Denver. The discussion over a new Convention Center began in June 1980 when the city made the decision to expand Currigan Hall. The following summer the Mayor McNichols office organized a task force to negotiate the expansion with a New York developer. The negotiations ultimately fell through and when Peiia became mayor, he formed a new task force to work with developers in choosing a site.” Pefia enthusiastically pursued building a Convention Center, and believed that it would “bring hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending into the local economy.” % Delshon, Gary. “Pefia to Chicago: Denver is Your Kind of Town.” Denver Post 27 July 1983: Al> » Klinger, Louis. “Peia wins: It's Union Station.” Denver Post 15 January 1985: AL+. * Peta, Federico. “City Needs a Convention Center.” Rocky Mountain News [Denver] 18 August 1985: 154 19shared. Mayor Pefia embodied youth and vitality in a city desperate for economic growth and rebirth. Pefia and his coalition strove to bring entertainment venues to Denver that, appealed to a younger crowd, not necessarily venues that appealed to the family. The Governor of Colorado, Dick Lamm endorsed Pefia’s behavior, and said, “I don’t think he would be getting this publicity, or it would be wearing very thin, if he wasn’t running the city to the satisfaction of the public." The first year in office had been very good for the mayor publicly, but the economic problems that faced his coalition remained. In 1984 Pefia made his first state of the city address and asked the public to “{hJelp make the city great.” He discussed the problems the city had to overcome, including the fact that in the thirty years since 1950 “the city’s population grew from 415,000 to 492,000 [while] it’s share of the metropolitan area population shrank from 68 to 30 percent. That means Denver's need to provide services for it’s residents has grown,” stated Pea, “while it’s ability to raise money for services has not.” During the oil boom in the late 1970s, the sales tax revenue in Denver remained stable in relation to inflation, Sales tax revenue generated by the retail trade did not grow with the city. It should have been rising to match Denver's expansion, instead it remained stable“* The cost of city services continued to increase yearly, while the revenues that the city brought in steadily declined making the mayor's job more difficult with each passing year. As Denver's influx of revenue continued to dwindle in relation to the services that the city needed to provide, balancing the budget would only continue to become more difficult. The mayor now faced this problem in balancing the 1985 budget which had * Delshon, Gary. “Mayor Peta Masters the High Profile.” Denver Post 6 May 1984: El+. * Delshon, Gary. “Help Make City Great, Petia Asks.” Denver Post 6 July 1984: Al*. 2ranged from around $130 million to as much as $170 million, which made the project especially difficult during the financial downturn that Denver experienced throughout Pefia’s first term.*® The search had initially begun with five potential sites, but Pefia and the City Council had narrowed down the selection to two choices. The debate between the council and the mayor revolved around building a new center at Union Station, or remodeling the existing Currigan Hall. The Denver City Council initially favored remodeling and expanding Currigan Exhibition Hall, while the mayor favored building a new center near Union Station.” Throughout the fall and winter of 1984 the squabble continued. Mayor Pei continued to pressure the City Council to make a final decision ona site, but council members felt they did not have sufficient information. Finally, in January 1985 Pefia convinced the City Council to endorse the Union Station site. ‘The mayor and the City Council now began to tackle the problem of funding the project, but delays by the council led to developments that would further frustrate the mayor. The debate continued into the summer of 1985, and in an outburst before the council, the agitated mayor “flayed the city council Wednesday for dawdling. ..on a decision on the proposed $140 million convention center.” Following the meeting, in a weekly press conference, the mayor said, “We should have been christening a convention center this year.” He continued, characterizing the City Council as “a group of individuals who can’t make a decision.”"' The ongoing holdup enabled a group of citizens that favored the Currigan Hall site time to mobilize. This group of private citizens came together to form a Committee for a Reasonable Convention Center and Klizer, Louis. “Peia Says City-Proposed Center Feasible.” Denver Post 13 Dec. 1984: AS*. Sherman, Sharon, “Petia, Council Sparring on Convention Center.” Denver Post 15 Feb. 1984: A7+ ® Klizer, Louis. “Petia Wins: It’s Union Station.” Denver Post 15 Jan, 1985: Al+. 5! Schrader, Ann, “Convention Center Delay Assailed.” Denver Post 9 May 1985: AS+. 23stated.** To win the hearts of the Denver voters still undecided on the issue, Peiia enlisted the help of one-time political rival Bill McNichols, who had not been a part of the political scene in Denver since he lost the 1983 mayoral election. McNichols went on air in a radio to campaign for the Union Station site.” Pefia managed to convince the City Council that building at the Union Station site served Denver best, but the people could not be persuaded.** Many Denverites considered the project too expensive, and worried that “Denver taxpayers would be indebted for too much money.” Following the defeat at the polls, the mayor boycotted further Convention Center talks, and a spokesperson for the mayor said that the mayor's office did not “believe the committee allowed us equitable input.” Peita kept open negotiations with the committee, but as his role diminished in choosing a new Convention Center, the issue faded from the spotlight. Approval for a new center ‘would not come until Pefia’s second term as mayor. Despite the setbacks with the Convention Center, Pefia began his third year as ‘mayor in the summer of 1986 losing “none of his dramatic popularity.” He had maintained his popular image with the people, and according to Miller Hudson, the former Chairman of the Denver Democratic Party, “Federico should be assessed in terms of what he said he would accomplish, He said he’d restore public confidence in City Hall, run it more openly, and make it more accessible — it seems to me he’s succeeded, and that’s reflected in the [Denver Post/News 4] poll.”*' After two years of hard work, ® Delshon, Gary. “Union Station Foe a Partner of Currigan Landowner.” Denver Post 21 Aug. 1985; A3+ §" Delshon, Gary. “McNichols joins 11".Hour Pleas for Center at Union Station.” Denver Post © Miller, Carl. “Center Foes Cashed in on Fears of Blank Check.” Denver Post 16 Oct. 1985: A6¥ ® Brimberg, Judith. “It's a Project for Millionaires.” Denver Post 16 Oct, 1985: AT, Delaney, Ted. “Pefta Boycotts Convention Center Talks.” 28 Nov. 1985: BI+. Blackman, Joni, “Petia Still Pleases Denver Voters.” Denver Post 30 June 1985: Al+ 25years had been difficult for the young mayor, and his tangible accomplishments numbered only a few. He had worked hard to establish ties between the mayor’s office, the voters and the business leaders of the city throughout his first term, Marshal Kaplan, Dean of the University of Colorado’s School of Public Affairs, discussed Peiia’s first term: “Lack of visible accomplishment has fueled widespread frustration with Peita’s leadership while his less visible successes go unnoticed. [Business and civic leaders] have been involved in governance than under the previous administration.” A lack of tangible progress haunted Pefia throughout his second campaign for Mayor, and the criticisms came often and early. His detractors characterized Pefia “as a weak and insulated leader who relied too much on outside consultants."** “[Mly biggest accomplishments can’t be measured with brick and mortar,” the mayor said, “but will be more important to the city in the long run.” The field started with seven other contenders, but a Denver attomey named Don Bain would become most difficult adversary. Bain pumped $200,000 of his own money into his campaign and “turned the ‘crowded campaign into a two-man race between himself and Pefia.” In city primary elections in May, Bain won with 40 percent of the popular vote to Peiia’s 37 percent, forcing a run-off four weeks later.” In the time between the two elections, Mayor Pefia stopped defending his administration and went on the offensive against Don Bain attacking his political experience. Bain “supplied vague answers to many of the cities most pressing questions and Pefia exploited the lack of solutions by telling voters, ‘This is not a time to start all Kowalski, Robert. “Peiia Makes it Official: He'll Seek Another Term.” Demver Post 13 Feb. 1987: Al+. ‘ Fulcher, Michelle P, “Peta Wins Four More Years.” Denver Post 17 June 1987: Al*. Fulcher, Michelle P, “City Hall Summary Judgment, 1987.” Denver Post 7 June 1987: F1+, © Fulcher, Michelle P, “Pedia Wins Four More Years.” Denver Post 17 June 1987: Al+. 27His second term in office would prove to have more tangible benefits than his first. When he left office in 1991 Denver had a Convention Center, a successful tax increase to welcome a new major league baseball team to Denver, a huge new mall in the Cherry Creek area, and funding for a new airport to be built in northeast Denver. While his second term may seem more impressive on the surface, without the hard-work and the alliances created during Pefia’s first term, little of this would have been possible. His dedication to the city, and unwillingness to give up during even the worst economic times helped him to realize his dream of a great city. A single event that occurred during his inaugural parade exemplified the dream of unity that Pefla wished to share with the people of Denver. The new mayor sat in the back of a 1938 Ford convertible as it cruised slowly down the 16" Street Mall to chants of, “Pefia, Pefia.” One parade watcher shouted out to the mayor, “You did it!” Pefta shouted back, “We did it. We did it" © Delshon, Gary. “Thousands Join in Festive Inaugural for 41" Mayor.” Denver Post 2 July 1983: Al*. 29