Posted 02.01.2009
State of the state: February
Snapshots of issues affecting Colorado business
By Mike Cote[REAL ESTATE]
Riding out the recession
Colorado’s resilience in the economic downturn recently caught the attention of the New York Times in a story that used the example of the Spire, a 42-story condo and retail tower under construction in downtown Denver by the Nichols Partnership, as evidence the city still has growth on its mind. “A number of elements are cited as keeping this region afloat as other areas founder: investments in public transportation, aggressive economic development and, most significant, a two-decade campaign to diversify the region’s economic base from oil and gas to alternative energy, aerospace, technology and telecommunications,” the Times said.
Perfect fodder for the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., which spread the word about the story in an e-mail blast. (Tom Clark, the EDC’s vice president, was interviewed for the story.) The Times didn’t quite get it all right, however, getting the birth of the region’s aerospace industry off by a few decades. “After the 1980s recession, the region had a talent pool of unemployed oil and gas engineers. That helped to attract aerospace companies like Lockheed Martin and eventually the Ball Corporation,” the story said. The Martin Co., (later Martin Marietta) has been around metro Denver since the mid-’50s. (It merged with Lockheed to form Lockheed Martin in 1995.) Ball Aerospace & Technologies has been around since 1956, when it was known as the Ball Brothers Research Corp. (Ball Corp., its parent company, moved its headquarters from Muncie, Ind., to Broomfield in 1998.) By the way, NYT, we also make more beer here than anyone else in the U.S., but that’s another story (See next page.) — Mike Cote
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