10 years later, City for Champions projects have been ‘transformative’ for Colorado Springs
Former Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach still remembers Dec. 16, 2013, like it was yesterday.
“I was in my office downtown and I got a call saying, ‘You need to come up to UCCS right away.’ They didn’t tell me why, but they said it was important.”
When he arrived at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs campus, Bach walked into a room filled with about 100 people and heard the news that would metamorphose the city in ways that, at that time, were only imagined.
He learned the Colorado Economic Development Commission had announced it awarded Colorado Springs about $120.5 million in state tax increment financing over 30 years under the Regional Tourism Act, money that would help the city finance its illustrious-to-be City for Champions projects.
“This has meaning far beyond what we could possibly envision today,” Bach told dozens of supporters at a news conference held at the university later that day. “I don’t think that overstates our circumstance. What this will do for so many generations of people in this region and for all those (who) will visit here. The jobs it will create, not only directly, but catalytically through this wonderful state of Colorado and the Pikes Peak region.”
Mayor John Suthers and Paralympian 14-time gold medalist swimmer Erin Popovich lead a contingency of VIPs to the top of the new U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum to place the last tile in the exterior on Feb. 26, 2020.
A decade later, Colorado Springs leaders and business, economic development and tourism officials agree the City for Champions initiative — bearing five new sports and entertainment venues that build on the city’s “history as a health destination, a training ground for servicemen and women, and a sports and fitness hub,” as described by the city’s tourism bureau Visit Colorado Springs — has been “transformative” for the community established on sprawling prairielands 152 years ago in the shadow of Pikes Peak.
As of Oct. 31, the city has received just under $47.8 million in tax increment distributions since it began receiving them in November 2014, according to data provided by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.
The financing mechanism allows the city to use increased sales tax revenues generated by development to fund each City for Champions project.
“What City for Champions did was, frankly, inject some mojo into our city,” said Susan Edmondson, president and CEO of the Colorado Springs Downtown Partnership, an advocacy group for downtown. “It set a bold vision and then proved we could accomplish it. Our city was really in need of something like that.”
The economy
Thirteen years ago, Colorado Springs was still slow to recover from the lasting effects of the Great Recession. Bach, who was elected the city’s first strong mayor in spring 2011, inherited a community that was in a “very deep recession economically,” he said.
The previous administration had laid off police and firefighters, the city had stopped taking care of its parks and emptying trash, streetlights were turned off to save money, the city wasn’t creating jobs, and young people were leaving the community.
“It was a dire time,” Bach said.
Compounding that, the city’s brand was “tarnished,” said Visit Colorado Springs President and CEO Doug Price.
“We had an identity crisis. We really were not working together. When I say we, I mean the city government, the county government and the private sector,” he said. Colorado Springs was being “branded by the outside.”
Visitors walk through an exhibit that demonstrates how science and technology play a role in maximizing an athlete’s performance during the soft opening for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum in July 2020.
Price, Bach and other tourism and economic development officials saw the potential the state’s Regional Tourism Act had to bring Colorado Springs to the other side of the tunnel on economic and marketing fronts, they said.
“I said to my staff, ‘… We need to find some kind of spark, something to galvanize the community, to help people come together under a unifying flag, some initiative. Even if we don’t win (the state funding) it’s something really positive to do,'” Bach said.
Several key players came together to add pieces to the puzzle and eventually the City for Champions initiative was born, four projects that spawned five venues: The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum, the William J. Hybl Sports Medicine and Performance Center at UCCS, Weidner Field, Ed Robson Arena and a new Air Force Academy Visitor Center.
“The importance of using the word ‘catalytic’ is because it’s a multiplier effect,” said Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer, president and CEO of the Colorado Springs Chamber & Economic Development Corp.
Alongside bringing in millions of dollars and visitors to the city, the projects have spawned new apartments downtown, new office space, additional venues on the UCCS campus and a new hotel and supporting infrastructure near the city’s northern gateway as part of the new Air Force Academy Visitor Center project, she said.
Construction continues on the new hotel and visitors center being built at the entrance of the Air Force Academy in July.
“The bottom line was we parlayed this relatively small amount of money, $120.5 million … with private and philanthropic partnerships — my guess is altogether it’s probably in the $600 million range,” said former Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, who served in the role from 2015 through early June.
“If you add to what that’s producing around that, all the apartment complexes downtown, if you add what I think that’s probably going to do for the Air Force Academy area, my guess is you’re talking about a total economic investment of about a couple billion dollars.”
City for Champions helped revitalize Colorado Springs in a similar fashion to how sports venues such as Coors Field, Ball Arena and Empower Field at Mile High, built over a six-year period in the 1990s, transformed downtown Denver, Bach and Suthers said.
“On a smaller scale, (City for Champions) had the same sort of catalytic effect as putting a stadium in LoDo,” Suthers said. “… If you had told me in 2015 or probably even 2017 that all these projects were going to make it, I would have said, ‘You’re nuts.’ But it happened, and it was a lot of hard work by a lot of people.”
The city faced a curveball when the coronavirus halted travel and shuttered businesses across the United States in mid-March 2020.
The global COVID-19 pandemic had an immediate effect on City for Champions projects, derailing the bond sales for the new Air Force Academy Visitor Center and disrupting visitation to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum downtown, which opened in late July 2020, for example.
William Uhlenhoff and his son of the same name, William Uhlenhoff, get into the Olympic spirit on Father’s Day with a foot race at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum on June 19, 2022.
While that has been difficult to work through, “the future really does look bright” for the venues and the city, Price said.
“I believe these projects showed our city and our residents that we can get stuff done here, and to trust us and believe in us. … When you build a place where people want to visit, you build a place where people want to live. When you build a place where people want to live, you build a place where people have to work.”
U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum
The museum was the first City for Champions project to be completed, opening during the early stages of the pandemic in summer 2020 that made attracting visitors to an indoor venue difficult.
The $96 million downtown project houses 12 galleries spread over three floors that include a Hall of Fame for Olympic and Paralympic athletes, displays on the Summer and Winter Olympics, history of the Olympic games and how the games influenced history and culture, a nearly complete collection of Olympic medals and the scoreboard from the “Miracle on Ice” game, in which the U.S. team upset the heavily favored Soviet team in a 1980 Winter Olympics semifinal game.
The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum
While museum backers originally forecast the museum would draw 350,000 visitors a year, attendance totaled just 23,211 in the first five months it was open amid state restrictions on crowds and requirements that visitors keep their distance from each other.
Attendance surged to nearly 112,000 in the museum’s first year but fell 25.4% last year to 83,515. Visitors in the first 10 months of this year totaled more than 76,000, or up nearly 10% measured by the monthly average.
The decline in visitor numbers last year contributed to the museum’s revenue falling nearly 24% from a year earlier to $8.59 million in 2022, which museum spokesman Tommy Schield attributed via email to “soft tourism in the Pikes Peak region” that had not fully recovered from the pandemic. The museum’s revenue in 2021 was higher due to “a significant in-kind donation” and substantial federal grants that the facility did not receive again in 2022.
The facility has tried to make up for the lower-than-expected attendance by boosting the number of events it hosts, ranging from nonprofit, corporate and wedding receptions to luncheons, dinners and a wide variety of community events — totaling 174 events last year and 186 events in the first 10 months of this year. The museum also hosted more than 300 school groups in both 2021 and 2022, and 261 in the first eight months of this year.
The museum and its initial CEO Christopher Liedel parted ways less than a year after the facility opened, and the permanent job remained vacant for nearly two years until Marisa Wigglesworth, then CEO and president of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, was hired in April. The nonprofit that operates the museum needed federal pandemic relief aid to make up for losses in 2021, but broke even last year, in part by cutting the size of its staff from 58 when it opened to 34 last year.
Wigglesworth said she is “absolutely” optimistic about the museum’s finances, but “we’re not out of the woods yet. Support from this community has been incredibly generous and is really critical to carrying the museum to the place we are today, as we are struggling through these early years.”
The museum is adjusting its business model to rely less on paid visitors from outside Colorado and instead attract more repeat visitors from the Colorado Springs area and the rest of the state.
The nonprofit is boosting its branding, membership, group sales and programming, hiring a chief revenue officer and building its programming efforts around upcoming Summer and Winter Olympic games as well as promoting the Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame induction held in years without Olympic games.
“We’re going to have to tweak what had been the original vision (for the museum) because it hadn’t been the right thing for the audience we’re serving,” Wigglesworth said. “What we’re coming to understand is that’s not going to be all we are.”
While Wigglesworth believes the museum has “a rightful place on the national stage to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Baseball Hall of Fame and (Pro) Football Hall of Fame,” she said the facility is “refining” programming for local visitors and offering more virtual options for those who live elsewhere.
Jariah Walker, executive director of the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority, told the Colorado Economic Development Commission on Thursday that the museum and Weidner Field are helping foster private development in the surrounding area, including a 36-story apartment building and proposed Front Range rail station.
The Urban Renewal Authority is the financing entity for the $120.5 million in Regional Tourism Act dollars pledged to Colorado Springs by the state.
He said the museum had “done a good job of moving through the tough operating environment” of the pandemic and said the new CEO has the experience to “drive the museum forward.”
William J. Hybl Medicine and Performance Center
The $61 million William J. Hybl Medicine and Performance Center opened a month after the museum but targets a far different audience.
The 104,000-square-foot facility, a partnership between the University of Colorado Colorado Springs and CommonSpirit Health Colorado, offers sports medicine and sports performance clinics, group fitness, imaging services, physical and occupational therapy, sports medicine primary care and specialized equipment for a variety of users.
Kelli Selman, a sports performance specialist at Centura Health, trains a high school athlete inside the William J. Hybl Sports Medicine and Performance Center in August 2020.
CommonSpirit leases the first floor of the Hybl center, operating the sports medicine clinic, physical therapy for all patients and an athletic performance center.
A report to the Colorado Economic Development Commission said the imaging, primary care and physical therapy clinics are all operating at or near capacity. The report also said that CommonSpirit is in talks with one of the world’s leading performance center management groups to take over human performance programming at the center.
UCCS uses the rest of the building to complete research studies on human subjects and houses the school’s departments of human physiology and nutrition and health sciences. The number of students enrolled in majors in those departments has nearly doubled since the center opened, and the number of students studying exercise science, nutrition, athletic training and a new doctoral program also has grown 14% during the same period.
Budget breakouts provided to The Gazette in October show the Hybl center’s income has exceeded its operating expenses since opening, with nearly all revenue coming from payments CommonSpirit makes on space it leases in the building.
The center’s expenses don’t include nearly $3 million a year in payments on bonds that financed the center’s construction and are repaid in part from the sales tax rebates the center receives under the Regional Tourism Act program.
The 104,000-square-foot William J. Hybl Sports Medicine and Performance Center, a partnership between UCCS and Centura Penrose-St. Francis Health Services, is the first in the nation to combine undergraduate and graduate studies with clinical practice and research in a sport medicine and performance environment.
Campus officials said in October they don’t view the center and other similar buildings such as the nearby Lane Center for Academic Health Sciences as stand-alone businesses, because they are intended to be student laboratories and support academic programs at UCCS.
“As we look at the academic programs associated with the Hybl center, enrollment is up significantly. These academic departments are attracting a higher percentage of non-resident students as well, which speaks directly to the economic impetus of the City for Champions initiative,” UCCS Chancellor Jennifer Sobanet said Thursday.
“We are adding academic programs within the Hybl center, including a doctor of physical therapy program, which will allow physical therapy students to stay in southern Colorado for their professional education. And finally, we are focusing on our three Centers of Distinction with our health system partner, CommonSpirit, with broad relevance to our community and with significant potential to draw economic development to our region.”
Walker, the Urban Renewal Authority executive director, told the commission the center had suffered “a little disruption” with the branding change from Centura Health to CommonSpirit and a transition to the new UCCS chancellor, but said the center had been “rocking it over the past six months.”
He added that the expected takeover of the center’s clinics by an orthopedic group (the leading performance center management group referred to in the commission’s report) is a positive development.
Ed Robson Arena and Weidner Field
Colorado College Vice President and Director of Athletics Lesley Irvine doesn’t just measure the success of the $52 million state-of-the-art, 3,400-seat Ed Robson Arena in tickets sold, sponsorships or even the number of pucks the Tigers hockey team puts in the net.
Robson’s value also is measured in connections.
University of Denver and Colorado College battle on March 4, 2022, in front of a sell-out crowd at Ed Robson Arena.
“When we opened the doors of the building — (it’s) one of my favorite stories, because I took a minute to just walk out the doors on the first night in that first game. Frankly, to just see like, OK, ‘Is it working, are lines moving, all the things?’ and I heard the fans, many of which — our season ticket holders have been multigenerational season ticket holders — and they were saying, ‘Wow, look at this campus,’ and I realized they had never been to CC. They had never been on our campus,” she said.
According to Irvine, that’s the true value of a venue like Robson, to provide a greater level of connectivity between the school and the city, and to allow the school a platform to promote Colorado Springs economically.
Just a little over a mile’s drive south of Robson Arena is the $47 million, 8,000-seat Weidner Field, home of the Colorado Springs Switchbacks.
The two venues are inextricably linked in that they opened downtown in 2021 and were originally supposed to be the same facility.
Fans watch as the Switchbacks play Orange County at Weidner Field on April 24, 2021.
In the early stages of the City for Champions projects, the city initially made plans for a baseball stadium to replace Security Service Field — now UCHealth Park — the old home of the Sky Sox Triple A baseball team. After fans protested over moving the baseball stadium, the city then proposed a multipurpose sports and events center.
That project was one of the reasons the Ragain family chose to establish a United Soccer League team in Colorado Springs as opposed to northern Colorado. After the Switchbacks’ inaugural season in 2015 and subsequent year, which was played at what is now Martin E. Ragain field off Powers Boulevard and Barnes Road, team president Nick Ragain deduced the viability of the team hinged on building a stadium.
However, in addition to finding a great location and the necessary funding for what would become Weidner Field, Ragain had trouble satisfying the events center component of the project, which he said called for an indoor facility that could accommodate indoor sports tournaments. He said his family and staff were focused on building the stadium and fulfilling the outdoor sports portion of the project.
The solution didn’t arrive until 2018, when Colorado College announced the plan to build what would become Ed Robson Arena, thus fulfilling the events center component of the original City for Champions proposal.
In July of that year, the Ragains stood with CC officials and city leaders and formally unveiled the two projects. Now Robson and Weidner bookend the northern and southern borders of downtown Colorado Springs, raising the city’s presence nationally and worldwide.
Ragain said Weidner Field was voted by USL Championship executives as the second-best venue in the Division II U.S. Soccer Federation in an internal poll. Last summer, the Switchbacks hosted the league’s second annual Summer Showcase, which featured a nationally televised match on ESPN2 and brought more than 200 league executives to downtown Colorado Springs and The Broadmoor for the league’s midyear meetings.
In July, Robson Arena hosted the International Jump Rope Union’s World Jump Rope Championships, which saw more than 35,000 people come through the arena over nine days. The competition featured 3,000 participants from more than 25 countries.
“That gave Colorado College and this city global exposure, let alone the fact that it was on the Olympic channel,” Irvine said. “At one point, Will Smith had picked up an Instagram post of a world jump roper and it had Ed Robson Arena in the background, and he had posted it on his socials.”
Robson Arena also has played host to the Downtown Partnership Breakfast, the MLK breakfast, CC’s commencement ceremonies and the 2023 USA Weightlifting National Championships, among other events.
A team from Daktronics installs speakers at Weidner Field in April 2021, as crews under G.E. Johnson work to finish the new home of the Switchbacks.
Weidner Field has also held events outside Switchbacks matches, including the Cerus Arena Challenge, the 2023, 2022 and 2021 Colorado High School Activities Association’s boys’ soccer state championships, and a host of concerts including AJR and Incubus this year, among other events.
Next year, the venue will host country music artist Jason Aldean, and the stadium is looking for more ways to “drive more concerts” to the venue, Walker told the state commission this week.
“Jason Aldean and the acts that we saw this year, we continue to see growth every year in the act and the attendance,” Ragain said. “It’s pretty exciting. … I think we’ve seen and had all kinds of signs and pictures of signs of people from Minnesota, from Texas, from Arizona, from California that came out to just the AJR concert this last summer.”
But the venues have been a boon to their primary tenants, as well, drawing better coaches and players to downtown Colorado Springs.
The CC hockey team finished the first half of the season this year by sweeping the No. 1 ranked team in the country last weekend to secure a ranking among the top 20 teams in the nation for the first time in over a decade.
At Weidner Field, the Switchbacks completed their third straight season in which they earned a playoff berth after a four-year postseason drought before the stadium’s opening.
As for tickets, Ragain said more than 132,000 tickets were sold to Switchbacks games this season, marking an 8% increase over 2022.
He also said all the events Weidner hosts, including games, attract tens of thousands downtown each year.
When combined with what USL Championship officials spend on marketing each season, Colorado Springs’ reach is even greater.
“Between social media, television, streaming, print and digital ads, the name ‘Colorado Springs’ is carried by league partners spending $200 million across 24 top-75 U.S. markets every year. We are constantly building new bridges into Colorado Springs,” Ragain added.
A jump rope team from Canada competes in the single rope team freestyle competition on the first day of the World Jump Rope Championships in July in Robson Arena.
While Irvine declined to give exact figures for Robson Arena, she said the Tigers have sold out every game. Colorado College is seeing yearly increases in sponsorships and ticket sales reaching record highs since opening in 2021, she said.
Through 10 games at Robson this season, there have been about 35,000 attendees, according to the Tigers’ website.
Jake Maire moved to Colorado Springs from Texas within the past few years. His son plays youth hockey with the Colorado Springs Tigers. As a result, Maire’s family began coming to Colorado College games. He loves the intimacy of the smaller venue and being able to interact with other fans in the community, including some of his coworkers.
“Oh my gosh, I love this place,” he said. “… The graphics are amazing and the jumbotron is amazing. You can hear almost everything in here no matter where you are. It’s great.”
Local teacher Matthew Earman left the state of Virginia for the first time this year. After one season of watching the Switchbacks at Weidner Field, he decided to purchase season tickets.
Hailing from Arlington, Va., Earman is used to supporting teams like the Washington Nationals MLB team, the D.C. United soccer club, the Capitals NHL team and the Washington Wizards NBA team. Soccer is one of his favorite sports.
He said he enjoys the energy that fills downtown Colorado Springs during Switchbacks game nights, from easy-to-find parking close to the stadium to nearby restaurants and bars, music and local businesses to patronize before games.
“I love walking into Weidner Field. The artwork at the main gate is beautiful and once you get up the ramp the mountains are right there as a backdrop. Most games have a theme night or a giveaway; everyone loves free stuff. It is not a very big stadium, but that is what makes it great. You always feel like you are close to the action on the field. There isn’t a bad seat in the stadium,” Earman said.
“I love living in Colorado Springs so far. There are a lot of great hikes and things to explore outside. We have been to CC hockey games, Rocky Mountain Vibes games and Switchbacks games. Living on the east side, the Switchbacks definitely bring me downtown more than I would go if they weren’t there.”
U.S. Air Force Academy Visitor Center
The last City for Champions Project isn’t expected to open for nearly two years — a new visitor center for the U.S. Air Force Academy, named for retired Lt. Gen. Bradley Hosmer, the first academy graduate to serve as the institution’s superintendent. The center and a nearby 375-room hotel, called the Hotel Polaris at the U.S. Air Force Academy, are under construction in the 51-acre TrueNorth Commons project just outside the academy’s North Gate.
Dan Schnepf, CEO of Blue & Silver Development Partners, developer of TrueNorth Commons, said the hotel is scheduled to open in November, and the visitors center probably will partially open (its first floor) in December 2025, with the mezzanine of the center opening in April or May 2026, or about two years after the company turns over the building to the academy.
Construction crews work on the unique architecture of the new visitors’ center at the entrance of the Air Force Academy on July 18.
That time is needed to install exhibits in the new center, which will replace the more than 40-year-old current center west of the cadet area, which has drawn fewer visitors in the era of tightened security following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
On Thursday, the Colorado Economic Development Commission unanimously approved a delay in the center’s opening from Saturday until Dec. 31, 2025, though commission member Chris Franz, the only Colorado Springs member of the commission, said he was both surprised and disappointed by the delay. The commission said the delay requires the entire center, including its mezzanine, to be open by the end of 2025.
Carlos Cruz-Gonzalez, the academy’s director of logistics, engineering and force protection, attributed the delays in opening the center to federal regulations on contracting that delayed securing funding until earlier this year. He said retiring academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Richard Clark wants the entire project done by the end of 2025. The Air Force and the Air Force Academy Foundation have allocated $24 million to designing, fabricating and installing the exhibits, which will be completed by a partnership of Idaho-based constructor Nasco and Washington, D.C.-based design firm Gallagher & Associates. Gallagher also designed exhibits for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum.
The center is designed with a roof that looks like a wing in flight, and its exhibits will be designed to show visitors a day in the life of cadets and their journey from arrival to graduation, reflecting academics, military training, athletics, research and other elements of a cadet’s education. The exhibits will use technology including artificial intelligence, “experiential learning,” interactive displays and flight simulators, such as using virtual reality to allow visitors to experience a cadet making a parachute jump, for example. The six galleries will focus on academy values and character, cadet basic training and campus life, learning and training at the academy, tradition and ceremonies and a vision of the future that includes space, national security, research and technology.
The new visitor center is expected to draw 1 million visitors annually, similar to the number the current center attracted before Sept. 11, and will be connected to the hotel by a pedestrian bridge over North Gate Boulevard. The nine-story hotel will be the city’s second largest after The Broadmoor, is designed with the intent of winning a four-diamond rating from AAA and will have unobstructed views of the academy campus and the Rampart Range.
Hotel Polaris will be managed by Greenwood Village-based CoralTree Hospitality, which owns the Magnolia chain of hotels, and will feature 26,000 square feet of meeting space, two flight simulators, a large sun deck, outdoor pool, firepits, outdoor game and rooftop lawn areas as well as a full-service restaurant, a 1950s-themed diner, another full-service restaurant and bar on the top floor, a poolside café, a full-service spa, fitness center and pantry/gift shop.
High interest rates and surging construction costs have put the brakes on an office park, retail and restaurant development in TrueNorth Commons, but Schnepf said interest in the project remains strong among potential tenants. Dallas-based office developer KDC has replaced Koelbel & Co. as developer of the office park and is negotiating a lease with consulting giant Deloitte to be the anchor tenant in an office building that would open in summer 2026. Blue & Silver also has commitments for about 10,000 square feet of retail space that probably would open in late 2026 or early 2027.
Schnepf said earlier this year that delays in the office, retail and restaurant parts of the project may require a bond restructuring since property tax from the office complex, retail and restaurant development was to fund 38% of the bond repayment. However, forecasts for revenue from the hotel have increased and probably eliminated the need to restructure the bonds, Schnepf said.
RBC Capital Markets sold more than $400 million in bonds in January 2022 to finance the visitor center and hotel. Revenue and taxes generated by the center, hotel, office park, retail and restaurants are expected to repay those bonds.
Schnepf estimates TrueNorth Commons will generate more than $100 million a year in economic activity when all parts of the project are completed, open and operating.
The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum and Weidner Field with a massive light sculpture are noticeable additions to the Colorado Springs skyline in the last ten years since the two were built as a part of the City For Champions projects. (Photo by Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)
Ed Robson Arena is an arena in northern Downtown Colorado Springs at Colorado College that has been built in the last ten years as a part of the City For Champions project. (Photo by Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)
Nunn Construction crews continue to build the Ed Robson Arena on the west side of Nevada Avenue between Dale and Cache La Poudre streets at the southern end of Colorado College’s campus on July 7, 2020.
