Brookings Releases Report on Mountain Mega Regions Including the Front Range

The Brookings Institution just released an outstanding and very comprehensive new report titled Mountain Megas: America's Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper. The report assesses the emergence of five megapolitan regions in the Intermountain West: the Sun Corridor, Front Range, Wasatch Front, Greater Las Vegas and Northern New Mexico. Each of these regions are also separately profiled. See below for links to these individual profiles.



Megapolitan Profiles:
Sun Corridor »
Front Range »
Wasatch Front »
Greater Las Vegas »
Northern New Mexico »



The report analyzes the demographic, economic and geographic factors which are driving the region's growth and analyzes the trends and forces impacting each of the Megapolitan areas in the region. It also provides many general policy suggestions for improving prosperity in the region.

The report is well worth reading fully but below are few tasty tidbits to whet your appetite.

• According to the report, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Las Vegas and Arizona are rapidly becoming the "New American Heartland as its economy, people, and politics become more central to the nation. Politically, the Intermountain West could be home to several swing states in the 2008 election and in time play the storied “kingmaking” role the Midwest does now."
  

• The report defines the Front Range as "Colorado’s I-25 corridor linking up metropolitan Boulder, Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins, and Greeley."



• One of the factors which has held the mega-regions in the Intermountain West back from becoming "World Cities" is the absence of a deep network of international air routes connecting these regions with global destinations. The region, including the Front Range, also performs relatively poorly in measures of air freight shipments and exports per capita.
  


• The report identifies four asset types which play a key role in driving productivity: infrastructure, innovation, human capital and quality places.

• Colorado has three Universities that rank in the top 100 state research institutions: University of Colorado (26), University of Colorado, Denver Health Sciences Center (42) and Colorado State University (55).
  

• With 19% of its work force in critical knowledge industry clusters - financial services, IT, health care and knowledge creation - the Front Range has the highest percentage of any of the five Mountain Megas.

• Labor productivity and per capita income in the five Mountain Megas trail the national averages except in the Front Range which was substantially more productive and had higher income per capita than the other five regions and than the U. S. as a whole.

• 36% of Front Range Residents had Bachelor's degrees in 2006, more than any other Mountain Mega region and well above the national average.

• The federal government should increase its partnership with regional governing entities in the Mountain Megas to improve they key productivity enhancing assets listed above.

MillerCoors Picks Chicago for its Headquarters

I am a little late with this post but MillerCoors selected Chicago not the Denver region or Milwaukee as its headquarters city. The company had previously signaled that it was looking for a "neutral" location for its new headquarters so this decision was not a huge surprise. Many jobs, of course, will remain in the Denver region. The key quote from their press release is below:

"MILWAUKEE (July 15, 2008) – MillerCoors announced its new corporate headquarters will be located in Chicago. According to company spokesperson Julian Green, the decision to select Chicago as a neutral location for our corporate headquarters reflects the need for balance between the legacy companies as we seek to create the best beer company in America. We plan to maintain significant operations in Milwaukee and Golden by making investments in both our breweries and locating the headquarters of our Eastern and Western Divisions and regional sales offices, as well as significant parts of our Operations, Finance, IT and HR divisions in our hometowns. In addition, we will continue to make major investments in civic, cultural and sports sponsorships throughout Wisconsin and Colorado. Milwaukee will always be the home of Miller beer, and Golden will always be the home of Coors beer."

MillerCoors Press Release Announcing Selection of Chicago as Headquarters Site


This makes it three high profile headquarters that Chicago has won in recent years: Boeing, United and MillerCoors.

The July 16, 2008 Rocky had a very interesting article by David Milstead about the MillerCoors decision which explained that the Denver Region and Colorado do not focus on providing large tax incentives to specific employers making location decisions. Instead, the Colorado/Denver strategy is to emphasize the state and region's overall low cost tax structure and other factors such as quality of life and the area's highly educated workforce.

Its interesting to note from the article that the State of Illinois and City of Chicago offered MillerCoors a tax credit/incentive package estimated to be worth $20 million to offset their relatively high real estate and corporate income taxes.

Interesting Links on State Walkability and Obesity

The website Walkscore uses data from Google to identify the locations of amenities such as restaurants, stores, schools and parks and to create a "walkability" ranking of neighborhoods and cities. Clearly the methodology is not perfect but it is an interesting approach. Denver is ranked 11th most walkable among 40 major cities with San Francisco ranked first and Jacksonville ranked 40th.

Speaking of exercise, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently released data and graphics which rank Colorado as the least obese state in the nation which is similar to the data from CalorieLab cited in my earlier blog entry. The CDC animated graphic which shows the nationwide rise in obesity from 1985 to 2007 is very disturbing.

ConocoPhillips Spurring Real Estate Development and Job Growth

According to The Denver Post, the ConocoPhillips acquisition of the Storage Technology property is leading many alternative energy companies to see office space in Denver's northwest office market and spurring new office development to accommodate this demand for space.

"At least two companies have brought a total of 110 employees to the area along the U.S. 36 corridor. Renewable Energy Systems, a wind-energy company, relocated a 100-worker division from Austin, Texas, to 23,000 square feet of space in Eldorado Ridge in Broomfield. Camco Global, which trades carbon credits, opened a 4,600-square-foot office with 10 workers at 390 Interlocken Crescent.

Range Fuels, which converts bio mass into fuel-grade ethanol, recently expanded from 7,000 square feet to 17,000 square feet at Eldorado Ridge, and Siemens AG plans to establish a wind-energy research-and-development facility in Boulder that will employ 50 researchers by 2013.

"There's a true belief that the northwest market is going to become, on a national scale, a hub of renewable-energy companies that are going to do research, development, production and management," said Chris Phenicie, senior vice president of CB Richard Ellis."

The full text of the article is here. Also see my previous blog calling for the Denver Region to establish a formal brand for the areas alternative energy cluster such as "Renewable Range."

Colorado is the Leanest State

CalorieLab.com, an online source of information on health and fitness, just released their 2008 state obesity rankings, showing that Colorado is the leanest state in the United States and Mississippi is the heaviest. Colorado's high score is consistent with other reports I have seen but it is still shocking that even in fitness and recreation crazy Colorado 18.4% of the population is obese.

I believe that Colorado's highly educated and relatively fit workforce is a positive factor in attracting capital, labor and businesses to the state. As health care costs escalate over time, the economic development draw of having a fit labor pool could become increasingly important.

Keeping Perspective on the Challenges with Union Station and FasTracks

If misery loves company, Metro Denver should keep in mind whats happening at the World Trade Center in New York when assessing the difficulties of planning and re-developing Union Station and building FasTracks. These types of complex multi-party infrastructure projects are fraught with challenges in the best of economic times. The delays and cost overruns at the World Trade Center site are enormous and increasing and have forced cutbacks to the Santiago Calatrava designed transit hub in lower Manhattan.

Biotech and Biofuels Research Partnerships

Two recent articles in the Denver Post about public/private/non-profit partnerships in emerging technology sectors: the $40 million bioscience grant program from the Boettcher Foundation, the Webb-Waring Institute for Biomedical Research and the University of Colorado and the biofuels partnership between ConocoPhillips and the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels.

$7 A Gallon Gas in 2010 Would Raise Many Questions

Jeff Rubin at CIBC World Markets is predicting $7 a gallon gas in 2010.

If this comes to pass, what will the implications be for driving habits, commuting patterns, real estate prices, and economic growth? In the Denver region does this open up an opportunity to accelerate renewable energy development? Will ConocoPhillips ramp up their employment of local workers at their Louisville campus even faster than the recently announced 7,000 workers by 2028?

FasTracks can't get here soon enough.

The Implications of Airline Turbulence for the Denver Regional Economy

When global companies make headquarters site selection decisions, access to transportation linkages is often a key factor.

"With customers and operations in all 50 U.S. states and 160 countries, air travel to and from Dallas will be more convenient, time efficient and cost effective. The DFW airport is the third largest in the U.S. and one of the top six in the world, offering daily nonstop service to 35 international and 133 U.S. destinations. Additionally, Dallas enjoys a second major airport; Love Field — the 50th largest U.S. airport — offers more than 160 nonstop flights daily.

Being headquartered near leading air transportation facilities is critical to global companies like AT&T as the airline industry continues to consolidate and reduce hubs and flights amid higher fuel prices and industry economic pressures."

AT&T Press Release Announcing the Relocation of their Corporate Headquarters from San Antonio to Dallas, June 27, 2008.

The press release above, shows that senior corporate decision-makers are keenly aware of the impending contraction of the airline industry in the face of high fuel prices and the economic slowdown. Decision-makers believe it is important to be located in a air hub city with multiple airline networks to avoid the risks and costs being in a city with "thin" or "shrinking" linkages to the global transportation network.

At first blush this portends well for Denver given the high traffic density at DIA. Denver is clearly better situated within the global airline network than the vast majority of cities around the country. A View of the Rockies believes that its hard to overstate DIA's importance to the economic health of the Denver Metro Region and that building the airport was a wise and necessary investment.

However, recent turbulence in the airline industry has left me wondering if DIA's relative status could be adversely impacted by airline contraction. The news that United has cut its routes and flights in Denver, including the highly prized Denver to London flight which began in March 2008 was probably inevitable given current economic conditions but also noteworthy. The Frontier bankruptcy and capacity reductions along with the Southwest expansion in Denver, raises the prospect that Southwest could replace Frontier as the second major airline in Denver. These factors got me thinking about a "terrible two-some" of events which, if they occurred jointly, could harm Denver's status as a major hub:

• United merges with Continental (or another major airline) or is forced into a dramatic restructuring and reduces flights dramatically in Denver to focus on other hubs.
• Frontier is forced into Chapter 7 bankruptcy or a merger, eliminating the only major airline headquartered in Denver.

If these two events came to pass, it could raise the cost and reduce the convenience of air travel in Denver and drag down the regional economy. Even a short-term dislocation of traffic at DIA could prevent the region from attracting investment at a critical time and in key sectors with long-term consequences. For example, a major contraction at DIA could disrupt the emergence of the regional renewable energy cluster in Colorado, causing businesses to relocate to other parts of the country. Once you "lose" a cluster, its almost impossible to win it back.

In the long-term, DIA's location in the middle of the country, capacity and expandability and runway design should allow it to thrive as a key hub in the U.S. airline network. However, let's hope in the short-term we are able to avoid the "terrible two-some" listed above.

The Decline of the Exurbs?

One of many recent articles about the decline of the outer fringes of suburbia due to rising gas and energy prices, changing tastes and urban revitalization. This article is particularly interesting because it features Metro Denver and it offers the national perspective of the New York Times. A clear trend in the current housing market turbulence is that residential properties closer to an urban core are holding their value much better than distant suburbs.

Colorado Ranked Thrid in Milken Institute's State Technology and Science Index Report

"Because states can no longer succeed with a low-skill, low-cost economic development formula, they must compete globally on the basis of new ideas, new products and new markets, along with superior productivity growth, the report states. The future will belong to those regions that can develop a thriving technology industry in a wide variety of fast-growing fields including biotech, clean technology, nanotechnology, communications and next-generation computer applications."

The Milken Institute - July 19, 2008

The Milken Institute released its 2008 State Technology and Science Index which ranks states by a range of criteria and indices to see which states are best positioned to achieve economic growth due to success in high technology industries.

The good news for Colorado is it maintained its position as the overall third highest scoring state after Massachusetts and Maryland despite increasing competition. Table 1 below compares Colorado's ranking to the other top 5 states in the overall index and five sub-categories.

Table 1 : Top Five States on Milken Science and Technology Indices by 2008 Rank (and 2004 Rank).



Notice that Colorado's highest rank was two in the Workforce Index and its lowest rank was five in the Concentration and Dynamism Index reflecting a strong overall performance across all the index components.

One area for concern is the fact that Colorado fell from first to third in the Human Capital Index between 2004 and 2008. This drop reinforces a long-standing concern on the part of policy-makers and economic development officials that Colorado does a relatively poor job of funding higher education in the state.

Another area of concern is Colorado's rank on the Technology Concentration and Dynamism Index which fell from second to fifth from 2004 to 2008. This index measures the strength of states' technology clusters or agglomerations which are key generators of economic growth through locational externalities. These types of network effects are sources of competitive advantage to states and regions. Thus, it is important to try to understand why Colorado's rank on this index decreased. One sub-component on this index where Colorado fared poorly is the annual growth in high tech industries (2002 to 2006) where Colorado ranked only 41st. Colorado's small net loss over this period reflected the sharp technology sector contraction after the dot com burst in the early part of the decade which hit the state particularly hard given its high concentration in the tech sector. As the technology sector has stabilized, any further decrease in Colorado's ranking in this index in subsequent years would be a warning signal of competitive deterioration.

One Year Anniversery of A View of the Rockies

Today is the one year anniversary of A View of the Rockies' first post. I want to thank the many people who have read, commented on and emailed me about the blog.

Its been an exciting year for economic development in the Denver Region with some of the many highlights including: progress made on FasTracks and Union Station, continuing infill development in downtown Denver, accelerating growth in the renewable energy cluster in Colorado, job growth in other key sectors such as financial services, increasing flights and passengers at DIA, and the continuing preparations for the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Here's to hoping the second year of this blog's existence will be even more exciting than the first.

Denver's Five Points District : A Regional Jewel

Over the past year, I have spent several very interesting days in Denver's Five Points neighborhood learning about the district’s African American history and culture. The galleries and exhibits in the Blair Caldwell African American Research Library (see photo to the left) were informative and engaging. The staff at the Black American West Museum, especially Executive Director La Wanna Larson, are both highly knowledgeable and welcoming. I also enjoy the blend of excellent Southern and Caribbean food and casual hospitality at the Welton Street Cafe.

Denver’s Five Points neighborhood has a wealth of African American social, cultural, and historical resources which are unparalleled in the Rocky Mountain Region and represent one of the most important historically African American centers in between Chicago and the West Coast. (Photograph below is the former home of Dr. Justina Ford, the first African American Female Doctor in Colorado and current home of the Black American West Museum).

A few of the many additional community-based resources include, the Stiles African American Heritage Center, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, the African American Leadership Institute, the Brother Jeff Cultural Center, the James P. Beckworth Mountain Club, and many others.

The history and contributions of the African American Community in Five Points to Denver are emblematic of one of the key themes of this blog: that the City of Denver and its wider Region serve as the Metropole of the Mountain West with a unique and diverse history. A key to promoting economic development in Denver is to build on and promote the unique character and history of the regions' neighborhoods and cities. (Photograph to the left is the Rossonian Building in Five Points with a view of the light rail tracks and Downtown Denver in the background).

With its dedicated residents and businesses, quick light rail connection to downtown, pedestrian oriented commercial strip on Welton Street, sense of history and community and mix of historic buildings and infill redevelopment, the neighborhood is poised for change and growth.

Back in 2002 the City of Denver wisely recognized the historical significance of the neighborhood by creating the Welton Street Cultural/Historical District. The neighborhood's history is physically represented by historical markers, the Deep Rock Building's Neighborhood History Photographs, the Blair Caldwell Library, public art and historical information located at the light rail stops, Dr. Justina Ford's relocated Victorian house, now serving as the Black American West Museum and in many other ways.

However, Five Point's sense of history and place could be strengthened by the use of additional public art work and signage to increase the sense of arrival into the district at key locations in the neighborhood including near the Blair Caldwell Library at the entrance to the neighborhood from Downtown Denver. Additionally, signage and public maps showing key sites and places of interest would improve wayfinding and visitor accessibility to neighborhood. (Photograph to the right is Deep Rock Water Building on Welton Street Displaying Large Format Five Points Neighborhood Historical Photos).

This is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Denver and I encourage everyone who has the opportunity, to spend some time there.

The DNC Host Committee's Fundraising Struggles are Nerve-Wracking

Scaled back welcoming events and postponed media planning tours due to fund raising difficulties are making me nervous that the Denver Region could look ill-prepared in front of the national media if the local DNC Host Committee fails to meet its fund raising obligations. For earlier blogs on the the convention see here and here.

To contribute, go to the Denver 2008 Planning Committee's web site.

Correction to "A Family Connection to Lower Downtown Denver "

Apologies for the long absence since my last post. During this period I took several trips, including a visit to Denver where I gathered some additional information about my family's connection to Lower Downtown. I want to supplement and correct a blog post from October 2007 about my maternal Grandfather, Fred Hosken, and Uncle, Edward Hosken's business, the Refrigeration Services Company (RSC).

After the Hosken's purchased RSC, it was located near 15th and Blake Streets in LoDo during a roughly ten year period in the 1940s and 1950s. In my previous blog, I identified the current address of the site where RSC was located as 1517-1521 Blake Street which is today occupied by Wahoos Restaurant. The actual address of the former RSC site is 1507-1509 Blake Street where FedEx Kinko's is located - one storefront south of Wahoos.

See Photos from 1950s of RSC and Today of FedEx Kinko's. on Blake Street in Downtown Denver.

Notice the clear similarities between the storefronts in the two photographs, the size, shape and spacing of the two doors, the display windows and the six second story windows. Also notice the similarities in the size, shape and placement of the door and second story window on the building to the right in both photographs (today Wahoos). This is clearly the same building in both photos.

One of the things which confused me during my previous post was the fact that today there is not a building to the left of FedEx Kinko's, there is a surface parking lot but in the photo above of RSC there is a building. Clearly the building was torn down sometime after the RSC photo was taken. The demolition of the building to the south of RSC, on the corner of 15th and Blake Street probably explains why the addresses on this block have been slightly re-numbered.