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John Hickenlooper’s political career was launched when the then-barkeep campaigned to keep the name “Mile High Stadium” at the new football palace the taxpayers were building for Pat Bowlen and the Denver Broncos. Hick didn’t win that one: The stadium district overseeing the project sold the naming rights to Invesco, a then-booming financial firm, but did agree to keep “Mile High” in the name.
Enter Invesco Field at Mile High.
And now, exit Invesco.
This week, Invesco announced that it on August 31, it will close its Denver client-service center, one of the last vestiges of its heyday here a decade ago, when it employed close to a thousand people. Now all that will remain of Invesco in this town will be a couple dozen workers at Invesco Private Capital, a wealth-management group, and an IT division.
And a stadium with a name that evokes… nothing.
“Our firm remains fully committed to the name Invesco Field at Mile High, which adds considerable value to our brand presence in U.S. and global markets,” an Invesco spokesman told the Denver Post.
Even as Invesco was pulling out, now-Mayor Hickenlooper was welcoming a new corporate player to town: DaVita is moving its corporate headquarters to Colorado, where it already had a base camp. At yesterday’s announcement, DaVita’s CEO gave a company jersey to Hickenlooper that featured the mayor’s name and the DaVita logo.
Too bad they didn’t make one big enough to simply slipcover Mile High.
