The 2008 DNC placed Denver center stage in national politics

And Denver got it. Wedgeworth was sitting at her desk at her new job at Denver Health in October 2007 when she got the call that this city had won the bid. "Next to the night Obama walked across the stage, it was the proudest moment of my life," she recalls. It might also have been the most terrifying, because now all the real work had to begin — and tens of millions of dollars had to be raised in just ten months. But they managed to enlist a team of 15,000 volunteers and somehow came up with enough money. "It was our time and our turn," she says. "It was one of my greatest accomplishments as a public official. And it was win-win for everybody.

"Even Republicans."

Denver dressed up for the DNC.

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• Barack Obama
• John Hickenlooper
• Steve Farber
• Politics
• Local Politics

And on that, Dick Wadhams, the Colorado Republican chair at the time, concurs. "Right after I decided to run for state chairman was when the DNC announced that it was coming to Denver," he says. "And I remember thinking, 'I can't believe how lucky I am.'" He was at the Pepsi Center almost every day during the DNC, doing opposition interviews — and inspiring double-takes from loyal Democrats in the crowd. "I had more fun than I did at the Republican convention.... It was such a unique experience."

But Wadhams didn't just appreciate the personal opportunities; he also appreciated what the convention did for Denver's public image. "Democrats, to their credit, were very excited; they were about to nominate this new candidate — and it was not an excitement I shared," he admits. "But I was in downtown a lot, and I thought it was just electric that week. People were just having a great time." Making sure they could have a great time took a great deal of planning, though. At one point, Hickenlooper and several aides sat down with FBI and Secret Service officials to discuss what had to be done to keep downtown secure. The feds wanted to close Speer Boulevard — which would have severely inconvenienced the people who worked downtown, not to mention discouraged residents from joining national and international visitors after hours. Hickenlooper remembers looking around the table and asking, "Who has final responsibility for this decision?" And, he recalls, "they all looked down and said, 'Mr. Mayor, it's you.' Who knew?" Ultimately, Hickenlooper decided that the infinitesimal risk of a van blowing up outside the Pepsi Center early in the morning was more than balanced by what the city would gain from keeping Speer open from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. every day so that people could get to work.

That tactic paid off: Downtown streets and shops and restaurants were packed, morning, noon and night.

It was the perfect backdrop for telling Denver's story: how downtown had added 15,000 housing units, how the city had banded together to fight chronic homelessness, how the entire metro area had joined to approve FasTracks, an integrated transit system. "The convention allowed us to put a face to our name," Hickenlooper says now.

That vision wasn't lost on Farber, who'd traveled around the country with Hickenlooper to raise money and support for the convention. "I think about it when I walk down the 16th Street Mall from time to time, when it's not real busy, and I remember the contrast," Farber says. "Because during the DNC it was like Fifth Avenue, Rodeo Drive. And people kept commenting about what a great city it is, how nice the people are."

After Obama's speech, he recalls, "a bunch of us went to dinner downtown, and we were saying, if you could pick a magical evening out of your life — something not directly affecting your family — what night would you pick?" They all picked that night. "That evening was magical," he remembers. "It meant something different to each person, but it gave everyone such a great sense of satisfaction.

"I think for people nationally and internationally who never really had a sense of what Denver was — and even those who lived here all our lives and didn't have a sense of what Denver was becoming — it put Denver in that class of major cities," Farber says.

Kelly Brough was Hickenlooper's chief of staff during the convention and put in long hours — but at least she would soon be in an ideal position to benefit from all that hard work, since a year later she became the head of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

"We sought advice from every city that had gone before us, and suffered through the criticism," she remembers. "After the fact, no question, people are intrigued by how we did it and think we're one of the best convention cities for how we pulled it off — both locally and internationally. We shouldn't underestimate the long-term value of that.... From a tourism standpoint, we showed the world this is probably a place you want to visit; we really did show well. From an economic standpoint, people saw our attributes, saw that we're a much more cosmopolitan, happening city.

"We changed this notion of who we are to the rest of the world," she continues. "But the big thing we did is change our sense of who we are. There are no limits to what we can do. We proved we were capable of doing it and surprised even ourselves. We see ourselves differently."