Current Issue
July 2010 Issue
Cover Story
Laboring over reform
By Eric Peterson
In 1851, Hispanic shepherds ventured north from present-day New Mexico into the San Luis Valley and settled the town of San Luis. You could say they were the first Coloradans.
Just three years earlier, the quirky alpine valley had been Mexican soil, but the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo shifted the border several hundred miles southward. The aforementioned first Coloradans were likely Mexicans before the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, but the treaty granted them citizenship.
The politics of immigration reform have wavered over the intervening years, and today amnesty...
Articles
The Economist: simple solution to a complex question
By Tucker Hart AdamsI’ve just read Helen Thorpe’s new book, “Just Like Us,” the story of four Denver teenagers whom she followed through their senior year in high school and four years at the University of Denver. All of the girls are Latina, two here legally and two undocumented, the latter through no fault of their own.
They were brought here by their parents when they were very young, but the contrast in the opportunities available to them relative to the other two girls is stark.
As I thought about the foolishness of an immigration policy that denies opportunity to young men and...
Election 2010: Scott McInnis readies for fight against Hickenlooper
By Mike CoteFourth-generation Colorado native and Grand Junction resident Scott McInnis has a long history in Colorado in the state Legislature, where he served as House majority leader, and in Congress, where he represented the Western Slope in the 3rd Congressional District for 12 years. Now the longtime attorney aims for the GOP nomination in the Republican race for governor.
McInnis, 57, managed to get House Minority Leader Josh Penry, a fellow Western Slope politician, to drop his gubernatorial bid. But McInnis supporters probably didn’t expect a challenge from Evergreen...
State of the state: utilities
By Mike CoteWestminster-based Tri-State Generation is undergoing a shift toward renewable energy, thanks to mandates in Colorado and New Mexico.
Tri-State supplies power to 18 member electric cooperatives in Colorado, 12 in New Mexico, eight in Wyoming and six in Nebraska, serving nearly 1.5 million people. Economists, policymakers and business leaders - and anyone who works for a living - are bracing for high unemployment rates for several years to come. And we haven’t seen the last of bank failures, debt hangovers and government revenue emergencies. That doesn’t mean we’re not poised for long-term economic recovery. But this one mixes the bitter with the sweet. “We’re going to have high unemployment rates in this country for several years to come, even though we’re going to probably return to fairly good job creation,” says James Paulsen, chief investment strategist... On the Denver side of the border with Aurora lies Kennedy Plaza, a little strip mall. This is a bad pun because the little strip mall’s anchor tenant is PT’s All Nude, a topless-bottomless place that years back was a Black-eyed Pea restaurant. Across a few yards of parking lot from PT’s lies a strip of stores. Aside from the anchor tenant the little retail center has been half empty for years. An optometrist made his office there until he took on a partner with an M.D. and moved on. The sign at the space farthest from the street still says, “Palm Tree Spa,” although... By Bryan Criswell If you haven’t tasted a Colorado wine lately, you’re missing out. The state now boasts nearly 100 commercial wineries producing various styles and types of wines. Raising the Bar ECO-DITTY A few years ago, mired in a drought, Denver Water called on customers to conserve water, and the populace responded with aplomb. Water usage decreased so much - in fact more than the water utility anticipated - that ultimately it had to raise the rates to make up for the shortfall in revenue. You could argue that higher rates are even more of an incentive to conserve, but still it’s a fine “how do you do” and thank-you for responding to a crisis with such a collective public spirit. For giddy-up and go, fossil fuels can’t be beat. “Sweet perfume,” energy analyst Randy Udall called them at a recent panel discussion hosted by the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. But replace them we must, or at least sequester their carbon, if we are to slow or even reverse the accumulation of atmospheric greenhouse gases that have doubled in the last 30 years. By its nature a global story, it’s also a very local story. “This state is on the edge like no place else,” said Tim Wirth, a former U.S. senator from Colorado who now heads media mogul Ted Turner’s U.N.... By Allie Winter The economic crunch that has led to thousands of layoffs in Colorado has made it difficult for nonprofits to secure individual and corporate donations. The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, which provides such services as housing and health care to 15,000 homeless people in Colorado, has felt the pinch, said Jennifer Wilson, director of research development and marketing. The struggle with fundraising comes as demand increases. The number of homeless people in Colorado has risen to 15,000, and about 44,000 people will experience homelessness at... There’s nothing like endless images of pelicans with their wings covered in oil to underscore the importance of alternative energy and international collaboration. When the head of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory met with a French energy executive to discuss their research partnership in late May, Deep Horizon already had been gushing as much as 40,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico daily for a month. The April 20 explosion, which killed 11 workers and injured 17 others, came just weeks after President Barack Obama reversed a ban on offshore drilling... It’s 9:45 a.m. on a Thursday, and the Apple Store at Denver’s Cherry Creek Mall is already buzzing. A diverse group is checking out all of the gadgets on display - most of all the myriad iPads. Launched in early April, the latest and greatest toy from Apple sold more than a million units in its first month, easily outpacing the iPod and iPhone’s respective launches in 2001 and 2007. It’s particularly impressive considering the iPad’s higher price tag ($499 to $829, depending on the amount of memory and 3G capabilities), but it also shows the rise of Apple in the new... As the football coach at the University of Colorado in the 1980s, Bill McCartney invented a powerful offensive weapon: the T-bone. The four-man backfield attack was a variation on the wishbone formation that had been sharpened to perfection by Barry Switzer’s Oklahoma Sooners, and it was ideal for the Big 8 Conference, where winning in early November, in the biting fourth-quarter winds of Norman and Lincoln and Stillwater, meant you had to know how to run the ball. When everything worked perfectly - when the quarterback could sense exactly when the linebacker would... I recently moved from the third floor to the ninth floor of a 10-floor condo residence. It reminded me of the sitcom “The Jeffersons.” Mr. Jefferson, an African-American, is able to “move on up to the east side to a deluxe apartment in the sky,” thanks to the success of his dry-cleaning business. I don’t know that I felt more important as a result of my “move on up,” but I did have a better view of the mountains. Not long ago, I attended the “Disadvantaged, Minority and Small Business Seminar” hosted by Don Marostica, executive director of the Colorado Office of... Tucked away in the massive Glenwood Canyon is a tiny imprint of a Mayan pyramid that was imbedded in the concrete sometime in the late 1980s. Vern Martinez put it there. The Mayan pyramid is the logo of Martinez International. Martinez thought it fitting to leave his stamp when the Parker-based company he founded in 1976 played a role in building one of the interstate system’s most scenic stretches. “When I thought about the origin of the Mayan pyramids, I just kept saying, ‘How did they figure out how to do all those things?’ and thought it was a good symbol for... In the weeks leading up to the Republican Assembly in May, the media already had called the gubernatorial race as a contest between former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, the GOP front-runner, and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, the lone Democrat. Someone forgot to tell Dan Maes, who edged McInnis by 16 votes. Maes, 49, will have to raise a lot of money in a hurry to be in the running, but he certainly has some newfound clout. We talked with Maes at the ColoradoBiz offices. Watch video highlights from the interview and read the complete transcript at www.cobizmag.com. The... Once it was the largest Hispanic-owned business in the U.S., and perennially the top minority-owned company in Colorado based on annual revenues. Now Burt Automotive Network is in the final stages of divesting its retail automotive dealerships and declined to disclose its 2009 revenues as required for the ColoradoBiz Top 50 Minority-Owned Companies ranking (see the complete list). Burt Automotive reported revenues of nearly $2.1 billion for 2008 and as recently as April of last year had eight dealerships. It’s now down to one dealership, with only Burt Chevrolet on... What do you get the man who has everything? How about some six-pack abs and a chiseled chest? When Dr. John Millard told me business at his plastic-surgery practice in Lone Tree was up 40 percent in the past 12 months, I figured maybe people were going to him to make themselves more attractive to employers amid the recession. That’s not quite the case. “I see a lot of executives,” said Millard, 47, a surgeon who learned a procedure called “high-definition liposculpture from Colombian doctor Alfredo Hoyos in 2006 and brought it to the United States. “I think by nature,... INITIAL LIGHT BULB: Bill Lowstuter conceived of SunTrac Solar’s flagship product - sun-tracking solar collectors - as a high school student in 1978, but the plans quickly found a long-term home “literally” in his garage. Once somebody asked me to help him figure out what his people thought about his management style. It caused us to come up with a list of things we thought were important. You could be running anything from one person to an entire large company. So here are some of my favorite items from the list. Is it a place where people grow? ColoradoBiz sought the views in the past month from both sides of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, inviting several columnists to make their case, both from a business and social standpoint, for or against the law that is slated to take effect in July. Columnists who weighed in included Jeff Campos, president and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Metro Denver (“When government takes a wrong turn”), Mike Taylor, ColoradoBiz managing editor (“Arizona’s law a step in the right direction”) and John Gimple, president of Gimple Roof Engineers Inc., Arvada,... Colorado is gaining a new player in the grocery market - and 500 jobs - as SmartCo Foods opens five stores this summer, hoping to attract consumers with its triple-threat concept: part conventional grocer, part warehouse club, part farmer’s market. “We saw an opportunity in Colorado. It is the only place where this concept exists today,” company spokesman Randall Oliver said. The company was scheduled to open its first metro Denver store in June and has others planned to open in July. It plans to open 20 to 25 stores in Colorado over the next few years, Oliver said.
This interview with Tri-State’s Lee Boughey, senior manager for communications and public affairs, was edited for space and clarity from an interview also available as a podcast at cobizmag.com. (Look for part 1 of this conversation, which appeared in June, at www.cobizmag.com...
State of the state: economy
By Mike Cote
Who owns Colorado: nipped in the bud
By David Lewis
Colorado wine: World class or just a novelty?
But has the state industry successfully transformed itself into one that compares favorably to giants like California, or do our wines rate as a collective novelty?
In May, I participated in a media tour of Colorado’s wine regions to get a firsthand look. The trip was hosted by Doug Caskey, director of the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board.
Colorado wineries have been...Colorado cool stuff
By Eric Peterson
When their daughter Ande was 2, Jennie and Scott Hammers learned she was allergic to PVC plastic - meaning many traditional food containers were out. “Tupperware is no good,” Jennie says. Looking for a solution, “We thought, ‘Why not organic cotton?’” Jennie sewed her first cotton snack bag in 2007 and launched eco-ditty the following year due to high demand at Ande’s Nederland preschool. After use, eco-ditty’s products - the snack-sized snack ditty and the larger wich ditty for sandwiches - can be washed by hand, dishwasher or washing machine. “They hold up...Rundles wrap up: the stickup
By Jeff Rundles
Fast-forward to 2010, and there’s another “conservation” effort going on that simply...State of the state: energy
By Allen Best
State of the state: nonprofits
Cote’s Colorado: Teaming up on clean energy
By Mike Cote
Dawn of the iPad
By Eric Peterson
Sports biz: CU’s Pacific heights
By Stewart Schley
Guest column: Moving on up
Executive edge: Vern Martinez
By Lynn Bronikowski
Election 2010: Dan Maes’ dark horse campaign for governor has some legs
By Mike Cote
Top 50 minority-owned businesses
By Mike Taylor
Small biz: Are those real—or just real expensive?
By Mike Taylor
Tech startup: Suntrac Solar
By Eric Peterson
After a successful career as a supply-chain consultant entailing some 300 projects with nearly 100 companies, Lowstuter decided it was time to pull his concept out of the mothballs in 2006. “It’d been hibernating for 30 years,” he says. After founding a solar installation company, Energistic Systems, Lowstuter set out to hone his original blueprint...On management: What’s it like to work for you?
By Pat Wiesner
Most people want to work where they think they will learn something, where they think they will become somebody. They want to work someplace where the boss has a clear interest in them as individuals. People will do their best, most creative...Letters: Where readers stand on immigration
State of the state: retail
By Randi Abels
