The sky was the limit for Denver aviation officials hoping to lure overseas air service to the city back in 1987. According to a “forecast summary” prepared that year by the consulting firm of Simat, Helliesen & Eichner, the Mile High City could soon expect to have an aerial armada…

One of Denver’s top airport administrators took early retirement last summer, but he didn’t fly off into the sunset. Instead, Errol K. Stevens came back to work the next day as a private consultant–with a contract from the city that pays him more than he earned as a public employee…

Passenger traffic was down by two million people last year at Denver International Airport. But a squadron of jet-setting city officials did their best to make up the difference. Travel expense forms show that in the past fourteen months, the airport paid for a city councilwoman to attend a “Beach…

The City of Denver’s plan to donate ninety acres of public land to a for-profit real estate venture at the Winter Park ski area got the green light from a Grand County district judge. But as the city prepares to transfer the deed on the taxpayers’ land to the Winter…

part 2 of 2 The WPRA’s deal with the Arlberg Club came as part of a flurry of activity that occurred after Gerald Groswold took over as president in 1975. An attorney and former division manager for Transamerica Title Insurance Company who grew up skiing at his father’s Arlberg digs,…

part 1 of 2 The City of Denver is about to take the plunge at its Winter Park ski resort, pledging city resources to a high-stakes real estate deal at the base of the ski runs. But finding out just how that deal will work–and exactly what risks taxpayers may…

The City of Denver is losing money hand over fist at the former Stapleton International Airport. But it has paid a private publicist $20,000 to put a happy face on the dormant airfield. Working at a rate of $50 per hour–recently raised to $60–publicist Greta Gloven has sat in on…

The storms blow in from the northwest at the State Line Cafe, a timeworn diner that since 1928 has stood like a sentry on the Colorado-Wyoming border. When the blizzards hit, it doesn’t take long for the lone Wyoming state patrolman assigned to U.S. Highway 287 to come down and…

Colorado residents have a right to look at the state’s public records. But more and more often, that right comes with a stiff price tag attached. Eager to raise revenue in an era of belt-tightening, state agencies are charging citizens up to $1.25 per page for copies of everything from…

One of Colorado’s most powerful law firms has gone face to face with the tiny Moffat Tunnel Commission–and the lawyers blinked. Earlier this year, the attorneys at Brownstein Hyatt Farber & Strickland sent the tunnel board a bill for $28,000 for sixteen days of work. Among other things, the law…

More than fifty boxes of former Denver mayor Federico Pena’s Denver International Airport files have been removed from the Colorado State Archives at the request of current Mayor Wellington Webb. Those public records, which include staff reports, notes and other documents accumulated during the Pena administration, were taken to the…

Two years after Mayor Wellington Webb tried to sell the Winter Park ski resort to the Winter Park Recreational Association for as little as $24.5 million, an appraisal commissioned by the city itself has valued the resort at nearly three times that amount. The Webb administration won’t make the appraisal…

Mayor Wellington Webb’s administration is poised to give the Winter Park Recreational Association unprecedented control over development at the city-owned mountain resort–including handing over clear title to ninety acres of land that now belong to Denver taxpayers. But top administration officials admit they know almost nothing about the one development…

City of Denver officials continue to hold out hope that debt-ridden airline MarkAir can bail them out of a jam at Denver International Airport–even though the Alaska company’s own attorney says it’s on the verge of financial collapse. The city, which backed away from handing MarkAir a $30 million tax-funded…

A crucial deal to redevelop now-abandoned Stapleton International Airport has crashed and burned. After months of delays, King Soopers has checked out of a much-touted city plan to make the grocery chain the anchor tenant at the old airport. Generating economic activity at the 4,700-acre Stapleton site is critical, because…

The City of Denver’s Winter Park ski area made a mostly smooth run through the state legislature last week, winning preliminary approval for a bill abolishing its rivals at the Moffat Tunnel Commission. But the Winter Park Recreational Association is headed for a few moguls–including a Denver city councilman who…

With Denver’s mayoral election less than three months away, and with four Democrats in the running, tempers are flaring over allegations that the forces of Mayor Wellington Webb are attempting to hijack the local Democratic Party machinery. The party’s own treasurer questions a fundraising scheme last October in which county…

Supersalesman Joe Vaughn arrived on Springfield’s main street late last year determined to sell the plains town on the economic benefits of building a privately financed prison west of the Baca County fairgrounds. It was a familiar sales pitch for Vaughn, an Indiana-based promoter who has cut deals for rent-a-prisons…

After clashing with the Moffat Tunnel Commission over lease payments for state-owned land at the Winter Park ski resort, the Winter Park Recreational Association is backing an effort to abolish the agency. If successful, the controversial city-owned ski area could save millions of dollars in rent payments–and get its hands…

Looking back on her standoff with a military helicopter on the plains of eastern El Paso County this fall, Mary Blake wishes she’d had more firepower. “If I’d had a big gun,” says the 49-year-old Blake, “I would have shot the devils, but I didn’t have a big enough one.”…

The tiny Denver Rock Island Railroad doesn’t have a cowcatcher on its lone diesel locomotive, but it may need one soon. The obscure, thirteen-mile-long railroad is engaged in a ripsnorting feud with the National Western Stock Show, which the Rock Island’s operator accuses of trying to put him out of…

City work crews are unearthing hundreds of century-old paving stones as part of street resurfacing projects in booming lower downtown. They’re also digging up trouble. Area merchants and residents accuse the city of going back on a promise to save the “pavers,” which advocates say were handcut by stonemasons in…