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October 2009 Issue
Cover Story
Real estate: Cisneros touts his company’s Boulder condo project
By Mike Cote
Former HUD chief Henry Cisneros recently visited Boulder to tout the Peloton, a mixed-use development his company is helping to finance - a $150 million project that increased sales recently by slashing prices.
Cisneros, who served as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration, operates CityView, an institutional investment firm based in Los Angeles that focuses on urban communities. It’s working with developer Bancroft Capital.
The first phase of the 10-acre development, built on the campus of defunct data storage...
Articles
Real estate: Cisneros touts his company’s Boulder condo project
By Mike Cote
Former HUD chief Henry Cisneros recently visited Boulder to tout the Peloton, a mixed-use development his company is helping to finance - a $150 million project that increased sales recently by slashing prices.
Cisneros, who served as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration, operates CityView, an institutional investment firm based in Los Angeles that focuses on urban communities. It’s working with developer Bancroft Capital.
The first phase of the 10-acre development, built on the campus of defunct data storage...
State of the State: Technology
Denver-based ReadyTalk chose last month’s Fifth Annual CSIA DEMOgala to announce its newest product: the ReadyTalk Media Player, which helps businesses make better use of social media by allowing them to easily embed recorded content into websites, blogs and other platforms.
“As the social-media revolution intensifies, businesses are looking for ways to not only listen to the conversations that are going on, but to participate in those conversations,” ReadyTalk co-founder Scott King told a lunchtime audience at the DEMOgala, the region’s largest gathering of tech...
On Management: A simple approach to selling more
By Pat WiesnerWe were being good parents, helping one of our children look for a house. (Details have been disguised enough in this story that none of those involved would recognize themselves.)
This was not my favorite thing to do, so I resolved to sit in the back seat and quietly amuse myself by judging the salesmanship of the woman showing us around.
I decided that for the purposes of my entertainment the rule would be that the salesperson would have to know substantially more about her client after the outing than when it started. The idea being that in order to earn the right...
Readers respond
WE NEED TO LET SOLUTIONS FLOW TO SAVE WATER
“Tapped out,” by Allen Best (October) is a wonderful, beautifully written commentary, long on history and definition of the Western water challenges, but painfully short on answers.
Water banking is essential for survival, and alternative crops may replace some of the hay. But major structural changes in “prior appropriation” are absolutely necessary to permit, encourage and launch new saving techniques, long overlooked, including:
No longer flooding to avoid losing water, domestic reuse devices, rain harvesting,...
Small Biz: Frozen burrito biz lands believers, backers
By Mike TaylorDenver is already the cradle of the giant burrito, with Chipotle, Qdoba, Chez Jose, Bocaza and Illegal Pete’s all emerging here in the early 1990s.
Boulder’s Phil Anson aims to make this the mecca of the frozen burrito, too.
Less than a year after securing financial backing, Anson’s natural and organic EVOL Burritos can be found in 1,000 stores. His 6,000-square-foot Boulder plant is churning out 20,000 burritos a day. By year’s end Anson expects to be in 2,500 stores nationwide.
“Ours is a very similar consumer to those (giant burrito) brands, but it’s a different...
State of the State: Brewing
We know Colorado makes lots of beer - typically more than any other state in any given year. That’s always worth bragging about when bellying up to a bar in, say, California or Texas.
Quantity’s fine, you say, but how about quality? Well, the results of the Great American Beer Festival from September confirm what beer lovers here know to be true: We’ve got the most AND the best.
Brewers from the Centennial State garnered a total of 45 medals, beating out California’s 39 and more than doubling Oregon’s 22. Colorado did it with fewer total entries than California, too -...
The Economist: What is the best way to measure a country’s happiness?
By Tucker Hart AdamsThere has been lots of talk recently about the shortcomings of Gross Domestic Product, the most widely used measure of a country’s output of goods and services.
Various pundits have argued that it is an incomplete measure of how well a country is doing, since, for example, it excludes unpaid work and includes the cost of treating illness.
A couple of years ago, I spent several weeks in Bhutan, a tiny Buddhist kingdom approximately the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined, tucked between India and China in the eastern Himalayas. The country spreads from east to...
Vine: ‘Tis the season to be sustainable
A MARK ON THE WORLD BAGS
At the behest of their son-in-law, Phil and Karen Schilling started importing handmade, fair-trade bags from Indonesia nearly a decade ago. The first bags were made of rattan, which the Schillings had replaced with recycled material in 2003. “The fruit and vegetable cartons they ship from island to island in Indonesia use plastic strapping,” Phil explains. “It’s hand-woven into an all-purpose utility tote.” The Schillings now import or distribute handmade bags from Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Mali, Indonesia and Guatemala. $18 to $25 retail.
Imported...
Guest column: Trucking industry needs to get in gear with the times
Hiroko Kawai
You drink sustainably harvested coffee and eat only local produce. You bicycle to work, and walk to the farmers’ market. But even if you consider yourself a very conscientious citizen, your life is still touched by trucking.
The trucking industry transports about 70 percent of all the goods in America today, moving nearly $24 billion in value in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Yet despite their ubiquity, for 50 years long haul tractor-trailer designs have remained fundamentally unchanged. Most only average six miles to the...
Top Company: nonprofit
In a giant warehouse in Centennial, a small group of volunteers sort through piles of medical supplies and pack them in boxes bound for Third World countries. Everything here has been donated, from the blue medical garb factory samples to the cardboard cartons that once housed copies of the latest Dan Brown thriller.
Row upon row of supplies are stacked nearly to the ceiling, some pasted with warning labels that they should be handled only by trained medical professionals - the kind of people Project C.U.R.E. helps to send to impoverished nations along with the...
Tapped out: The future of water on the Front Range
By Allen BestI. STORM ON THE HORIZON
It’s been said that every glass of water in Colorado comes from the Western Slope. Strictly speaking, that’s wrong. A few places - Burlington, Trinidad and Castle Rock come to mind - get no water from west of the Continental Divide.
Yet the saying rings true, because without tunnels perforating the Continental Divide, augmenting native supplies with 400,000 acre-feet of water on average from the Colorado River and its tributaries, Front Range cities and the farms sprawling eastward would be very different places.
Rocky Ford cantaloupes would...
Natural Wonders: Colorado is rich with mineral and energy resources
By David LewisGold. Coal. Oil. Natural gas. Wind. Water. Solar.
Colorado is blessed with an abundance of mineral and energy resources. Mining was the main reason the state came into being, followed by ranching, which developed largely in order to feed those thousands of hungry miners. From the founding of Denver - based on a gold strike that failed to pan out - to the ‘59ers of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush - the state always has been identified with its resource wealth.
Times have changed, of course. Today, mining, oil and gas, and other mineral extraction industries are a minor part...
State of the State: Education
Tony Frank, who became the 14th president of Colorado State University in June, oversees a campus that includes 25,000 students, 1,400 faculty, 6,500 additional employees and a budget that tops $800 million. ColoradoBiz recently sat down with Frank at CSU’s Denver office to discuss funding for higher education.
Q. You’ve had a philosophical difference with your predecessor, Larry Penley. How do you view the university nationally in terms of fundraising?
A. While I think CSU is very important to the state of Colorado, roughly 20 percent of our enrollment comes from...
State of the State: Restaurants
By Patricia KaowthumrongFast-food patrons along Denver’s 16th Street Mall might have done a double-take when the McDonald’s at Cleveland Place reopened recently after being closed several months for remodeling.
“I’m pretty sure this is the nicest McDonald’s I’ve ever been to. And I’ve been to lots of McDonald’s,” said Juante Chavez, who enjoyed his Big Mac and French fries on a recent day at the restaurant. “It makes me want to put on a suit and tie.”
With patent leather booths, local art, a stage for performers and walls made of Colorado quarried stone, nothing is reminiscent of a typical...
Readers respond
‘GREEN’ GOVERNOR BE GONE
Just read the September article in ColoradoBiz about Gov. Bill Ritter and his agenda to turn Colorado into a green state (“Power Glide,” Robert Schwab). From the sounds of it, we are well on our way.
Too bad. Colorado is rich in natural resources, which Gov. Ritter has written off in pursuit of an agenda. Small business on the Western Slope of Colorado will suffer the most from these policies. The notion that so-called green jobs will employ as many people as natural gas, oil, coal and eventually oil shale is simply not true. Perhaps solar and...
Q4 Tech Report: match game
By Eric PetersonSometimes finding a plumber or other service provider can be akin to pulling a marble out of a jar. You can just pluck it out and hope it’s not a bad one. But there are too many different marbles to be sure.
However, consumers can also hop on the Web to do a little bit of research before making a decision. Plenty of businesses and other organizations want to help by vetting the plumbers and other service providers before you pull one out of the figurative jar, from the nonprofit Better Business Bureau to numerous for-profit companies, including Golden-based...
On Management: The banks need to get back in play!
By Pat WiesnerTwo men I know well own a business in a small mountain town. They have been there a number of years and have been good for the area, bringing business and pretty good success to themselves. They employ a dozen or so people and are active around the community. The business owns a few buildings.
Three years ago, the owners decided to put up another building. The bank they had been dealing with for four or five years said, “Let us finance it for you. You’re a good customer, you have cash in our bank and you can use the money for growth.” For reasons of their own the...
State of the State: Economy
By Mike TaylorFormer U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow says the U.S. economy is showing signs of recovery, but he warns that threats remain, and if deflation were to occur it could cause a recession relapse, what he calls a “double dip” such as that experienced in the Great Depression.
“I think we’ve avoided the darkest and most difficult scenario,” said Snow, who served as Treasury secretary under George W. Bush from 2003 to 2006. But tempering that guarded optimism, he pointed out there was a short-lived recovery in the early stages of the Great Depression, too, before the...
The Economist: Simple solutions to complex problems
By Tucker Hart Adams
My father was an engineer, and he always insisted on buying the simplest piece of machinery available, arguing, “The more complicated it is, the more opportunities there are for something to go wrong.”
In listening to the various proposals to deal with the problems facing the U.S., I think that piece of advice from 60 years ago still applies. Take the health insurance issue, for example. There are various proposals wending their way through Congress, each hundreds of pages long. Everyone can find something with which to disagree.
The solution isn’t complicated....
State of the State: Leadership
By Mike Cote
As a financial adviser for TIAA-CREF, Sterling Rowe wouldn’t normally mix with Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, former Mayor Wellington Webb or Gov. Bill Ritter.
Through the Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce’s Chamber Connect program, he’s had the chance to meet informally with such political leaders and learn more about government. Perhaps more importantly, Rowe has had the chance to network with other young black professionals as well as chamber board members.
With its third class, of 33 participants, scheduled to graduate Oct. 23 at Mile High Station, Chamber...
Guest column: The five big lies of inventors
By Thomas Frey and Thomas FranklinThe economic downturn has forced us to rethink our lives. For many, this means a time of stepping into the workshop to give shape to ideas that have been waiting for the right opportunity to emerge.
While Hollywood likes to portray inventors as the wacky mad-scientist type, nothing is further from the truth. Inventors may be wired differently, but for the most part they are very dedicated, hard-working individuals bent on making the world a better place.
But in the business world, few things go according to plan. New products are especially prone to commercial...
Colorado: By the numbers
9 percent - Anticipated decline in Colorado sales- and use-tax revenues for fiscal-year 2008-09 from the previous year. The Office of State Planning and Budgeting attributed the decline in its June 22 revenue forecast to the “rapid collapse auto sales, the rise in fuel prices to nearly $4 a gallon and the subsequent inflationary increase in goods which drove out disposable income.”
4.8 percent - Colorado’s personal income increase in 2008 from the previous year.
0.2 percent - Colorado’s projected personal income increase in 2009 over 2008. It is projected to increase...
Rundles Wrap Up: Lather. Rinse…..
By Jeff RundlesBy many accounts, the Great Recession is either over, or “may be over,” or soon will be over, or we are on the verge of an economic rebound. The Dow is on a relatively upward swing, housing has stabilized, retailers have reported lower losses, and a story in mid-September said the nation’s banks are showing signs of taking on more risk, although I’m skeptical.
About the only true economic indicator that still looks very bad is employment, and, of course, that would always be the last thing to rebound.
We all knew the recession would end sometime, and we can debate...
Executive Edge: Jodi Chambers
By Lynn Bronikowski
PHOTO BY TODD NAKASHIMA
Dr. Jodi Chambers will never get the image out of her head - an 18-year-old near death in the emergency room of St. Anthony Central Hospital, a victim of a gang stabbing. Chambers was head of trauma.
Her patient had escaped a gang lifestyle, but on this night he got caught in its web at a party where he was stabbed in the throat.
“Blood was everywhere, spurting to the ceiling, when we released the compression on the artery,” Chambers recalls. “I went out and talked to his parents, telling them he may wake up fine or he may not wake up at...
Sports Biz: Something new in football—humility
By Stewart Schley
Like the swallows returning to Capistrano and the leaves of Aspen trees turning a brilliant gold on Independence Pass, football descended again to the planet Earth. And it was good.
It happened without announcement or ceremony or any particular blowing of any particular horn. It just happened. Suddenly one Friday afternoon, cued by some unseen force, high school kids smeared black polish under their eyes and stuffed their heads inside freshly polished helmets and ran onto fields where eager cheerleaders bounced up and down and referees blew whistles, and the smack of...
Cote’s Colorado: Here comes the sun
By Mike CoteYou can hear the enthusiasm in Bill Lowstuter’s voice and see it sparkle in his eyes as he describes how much power his Golden company’s solar panels produce and how much carbon dioxide they offset.
Maybe that’s because he’s waited a long, long time for his moment in the sun. His contribution to the “new energy” economy, the SunTrac Solar panel, is as old as disco balls, bell bottoms and a White House occupied by Jimmy Carter.
“I originally designed this panel back in 1978 and built the first panel back then. And then it kind of got put on the shelf,” said Lowstuter,...
Small Biz: Tech Startup
By Eric Peterson
INITIAL LIGHT BULB: A mechanical engineer who’s designed ejection seats for fighter jets, William Oliver developed a prototype for a better, greener alternative to the Styrofoam peanut in a Sedalia garage early in the millennium.
Oliver soon met Miguel Baldwin, a 25-year employee of UPS, and the pair joined forces, launched a company, VerteX, and started selling the product, ExpandOS, in 2005. “It was a no-brainer,” Baldwin says.
Sold via service contracts in tandem with machines dubbed Expanders, ExpandOS is shipped in densely folded flat sheets, much more efficient...
