Letter submitted to the editor, The Denver Post, not published:

NO HELP IN LETTING IN THE SUNSHINE

The headline on your editorial (Perspective, 5/10/09) relating to Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke’s recent visit to Denver, “Why was public locked out of census meeting?” held promise but the content was about as meek and tame as the reaction of the reporter(s) who failed to challenge the closed-door segment when confronted with it—hardly a whimper. I feel sorry for the dozens of small-town editors who look to the big papers for leadership in forcing open the closed doors of official secrecy. The Post has let them down.

Percy Conarroe

TWIN PEAKS MALL: TAX SUBSIDIES COULD BE FOR NAUGHT

Should Longmont’s taxpayers help bail out the ailing Twin Peaks Mall and, if so, then why not extend that favor to every business in town? This gnawing question of fairness weighs heavily on the minds of many locals, as city officials continue to negotiate a “partnership” deal with the mall owner.

Let’s face it: Shopping malls across America are losing their oomph, no matter their location, status or upgrading. The sagging economy and inflated gasoline prices played a part, but the word “anachronism” might better fit the declining shopping-mall era. Fickle shoppers, famous for flitting from mall to mall, are fleeing to the stand-alone big boxes and, ominously, to the matchless variety and convenience of the Internet where, of course, they don’t even have to pay sales taxes.

On April 16 the nation’s second largest mall owner, General Growth Properties Inc. of Chicago, filed for bankruptcy. Of the 200 malls GGP owns, four are in Colorado: Park Meadows in Lone Tree (south Denver), Foothills in Fort Collins, Southwest Plaza in Littleton, and Chapel Hills in north Colorado Springs. All of these four are considered upper tier. Chapel Hills, one of the newer malls in Colorado Springs, lured shoppers from the Citadel Mall in east Colorado Springs, which earlier had plundered the Sears-anchored Southgate Mall on that city’s south side. City officials naturally don’t care who wins the dizzying mall game, just so the tax revenues keep flowing.

Having lived in Colorado all my life and being casually observant of shopping malls around the state, very few of the once-flourishing malls are left. Although not the oldest, Denver’s Cherry Creek is probably still the classiest. Louisville tried valiantly to get into the mall game in 1980 but developer Jacobs-Kahan of Chicago had no luck signing an anchor store and finally gave up.

Retail outlet stores were popular for a while. Clusters sprouted up at places like Frisco and Castle Rock. Probably the most successful was at Loveland -- until the Centerra strip mall opened nearby.

Even Urban Renewal with its eminent domain power and tax increment financing “partnering” with local taxpayers could not save Englewood’s charming Cinderella City Mall, which opened in 1968 to compete with the nearby Villa Italia Mall, built in 1965. Despite the investment of millions of TIF tax dollars to renovate it mid-term, Cinderella City, an elaborate, covered complex, was demolished in 1999.

Villa Italia, despite a $120 million infusion of cash by the City of Lakewood in converting it to a “sustainable” mixed-use housing/stores complex, and after changing the mall’s name to Belmar, it still lost anchor stores Dillard’s and J.C. Penney and has never recovered. Shoppers complained that the “village feeling” of the mixed-use concept was confusing and made the mall hard to navigate.

Boulder’s Crossroads Mall, funded almost entirely with huge amounts of Urban Renewal TIF money--those who know will not reveal the total indebtedness--ran into trouble when the Westminster Mall just down the road (both opened in the early 1960s) began expanding. But of course, the Westminster Mall had diverted shoppers from the once-prosperous Northglenn Mall, helping shut it down. Then, with Broomfield’s bold, new Flatiron Mall arriving on the scene in 1999, the City of Westminster spent $7.5 million helping its mall owner renovate, but to little avail. Flatiron had lured shoppers away from both the Westminster Mall and the Crossroads Mall (refurbished in 1983; closed in 2004 and renamed Twenty Ninth Street) and neither has recovered. All the Crossroads stores except Foley’s were demolished.

The onus is now on Flatiron and its age and vulnerability are showing. The new Event Center nearby is struggling. Looking ahead, no doubt, Broomfield officials, in reconfiguring the city’s boundary into a county, made sure to secure, yes, a viable mall site at the junction of Colo. 7 and I-25, pretty far afield. But upscale anchor stores are scarcer than ever, and discount retailers, disdaining the stiff mall rent, find they can operate just as well on the periphery – in Longmont, that’s just west across the street.

Mixed-use or not, the Longmont City Council has no business diverting tax revenue through TIF into this privately owned mall project -- “on the come” or for any other concocted reason, such as “infrastructure.” Obviously, if TIF availability is a deal killer, then that should raise some red flags.

“Blight” is a term that, unfortunately, reflects negatively on both the property-owner, for letting his holdings deteriorate and doing nothing about it, and the City Council and manager for allowing it to continue. A further example of the city's inaction is the truly blighted, burn-scarred flour mill, in my opinion an eyesore.

The city should get down to business: shut off the sales pitch, fire the high-priced consultants, tell the Twin Peaks mall owner to present his financial capability, submit his plan for review, and whenever he is ready, let’s see the renovating start--without leaning on the taxpayers.

Letter to editor, Longmont Times-Call
published 5/9/09

APPEAL IN ROCKY MOUNTAIN CHRISTIAN CHURCH CASE TROUBLING

“I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors, fertile fields and boundless forests, in her rich mines and vast world commerce, in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into her churches … did I understand the secret of her genius and power.” — Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859).

Too bad this historic observation by the famous French statesman who toured America in the 1830s escaped Boulder County commissioners Will Toor, Ben Pearlman and Cindy Domenico as they decided to appeal their courtroom setback in trying to keep Rocky Mountain Christian Church at Niwot from expanding to better serve its flock.

A U.S. District Court jury found that the commissioners treated the church on “less than equal terms,” imposed a “substantial burden” on its religious exercise, and unreasonably limited the church. The judge agreed and ordered the commissioners to issue a building permit. They refused.

Unaccustomed to having their authoritarianism blunted, commissioner Toor found all of this “very troubling, from a constitutional perspective,” quoted in 5/1/09 Times-Call.

But it’s also very troubling to many of us that when the government becomes overzealous in regulating religious activities, it is difficult to discern where official bigotry begins and ends.

The commissioners have already sunk $250,000 of our tax money into this $1.13 million save-face exercise, so the economic recession must not be affecting Boulder County.

Let’s hope that if this fight reaches the Supreme Court it will have narrowed into a First Amendment test: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free expression thereof.”

That’s really what this power-play is all about. The commissioners through their land-use code think they can do what Congress cannot.

May God bless America.