Pueblo tourist project pulled from the brink

Colorado’s Economic Development Commission on Thursday provided Pueblo’s Regional Tourism Act project, which was bumping up against a five-year deadline to make significant progress, a reprieve.

“This has been a struggle to get to the point where we are,” Don Banner, chairman of the Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority, told the commission five years to the day after the commission first approved the Heritage of Heroes project.

The renewal authority will have 90 days to complete a bond offering of $5 million or more to finance the project, the centerpiece of which includes a city convention center expansion that will host the Professional Bull Riders University, a training facility for athletes and officials in bull riding and oth-

er sports.

Using the state’s pledge, capped at $35.7 million of future sales tax collections tied to out-of-state visits, the renewal authority plans to raise around $17 million to finance the expansion.

After a promising start, the renewal authority struggled to raise outside money. The state eventually realized a third-party analyst overestimated how much sales tax revenues the city was due.

That issue was resolved with a reduction in state support, but a change in ownership of the Professional Bull Riders, the organization that will run the university, created additional complications. The new owners, while willing to commit verbally to a training facility, didn’t want to be locked into a longterm contract, and wanted training for other sports included in the lease.

State economic development officials, in response, didn’t want to commit taxpayer money to a project that might not fulfill its original intent, given that the bull riding university was the key draw for out-of-state visitors in Pueblo’s project.

If they had wanted to play hardball, they could have ended support for the project Thursday due to a lack of progress. To overcome state objections, Pueblo on March 14 issued a promissory note for $14.4 million, with the money committed specifically for the construction of the training facility.

State funds can only be used to pay interest on the city loan, but not the principal. Pueblo also agreed to reimburse the state if the Professional Bull Riders group backs out of its commitments, say, to locate a bull rider training facility in a more popular and accessible location such as Las Vegas.

“The key thing is that Pueblo is putting more money in,” said Jeff Kraft, director of business funding and incentives at the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

Stephanie Copeland, director of COEDIT, hammered out a compromise letter, which was sent to the commission Wednesday urging a vote in favor of an extension for Pueblo.

The Regional Tourism Act, passed in 2009 during the depths of the recession, provides local governments with a rebate against future state sales-tax revenues tied to out-of-state visits on large-scale tourism projects that otherwise wouldn’t get built.

Pueblo and Aurora were the first two cities to win approval for projects. At first it seemed like Aurora’s plans for a 1,500-room Gaylord conference hotel, the largest in the state, was dead in the water after the city’s development partner dropped out. Pueblo, by contrast, was moving fullsteam ahead.

But in the past two years, the situation flipped around. Aurora found a new developer and overcame multiple lawsuits. Aurora city attorney Mike Hyman told the commission Thursday that the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center is on track to open by the end of 2018. Concrete is being poured on the hotel’s 14th floor and a topping out ceremony is scheduled for Aug. 23.

The hotel already has booked 455,344 room nights, of which 84 percent are from organizations that have never brought a convention or conference to the state, he said.

“We have done everything we told the commission we would do,” he said.