USOC approves lucrative city offer

Keeping the U.S. Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs will cost the city millions more than it anticipated under a reworked deal unveiled Thursday after the USOC board authorized its senior management team to accept a $53 million incentives package.

The city must generate $9.5 million in certificates of participation (COPs) to cover $16 million in improvements to the Olympic Training Center, according to a new economic development agreement between the city and the

USOC that City Council will discuss during a special meeting at 4 p.m. today.

For the initial phase of OTC renovations, funding also will come in a $500,000 grant from the Colorado Office of
Economic Development, a $1.5 million matching donation from the El Pomar Foundation and $1.5 million in community contributions — which must be raised within three months of the agreement being finalized. The second phase requires $3 million from the city within 25 months.

City Council will vote on the deal during an Aug. 11 meeting. The proposed agreement and a proposed settlement with the project’s original developer, LandCo Equity Partners, are available on the city’s Web site, springsgov.com.

The agreement — stipulating the USOC stays in town for 30 years — calls for a building housing five national governing bodies of Olympic sports at 30 S. Cimino Drive to be completed by Dec. 31 and the USOC’s headquarters building at 27 S. Tejon St. to be finished by March 31, 2010.

LandCo is expected to complete the core and shell of the six-story headquarters building by Sept. 30, then a nonprofit city entity will purchase the top five floors of the building for $18.8 million “to pay LandCo’s third-party expenses at LandCo’s direction.” The city will hire a different developer to construct the interior.

For the financing to fall in place, Mayor Lionel Rivera said he’s relying “on not only the city, but also philanthropists in the community to be partners with us. … To lose (the USOC) would be a terrible blow to us from an economic development standpoint and just an image standpoint.”

USOC acting chief executive officer Stephanie Streeter said her organization, which left New York for Colorado Springs in 1978, should OK the deal provided “the agreements stay in their current form. We believe through the public comment period that the citizens of the city will believe this is a good thing.”

Under the original March 2008 agreement, the city was to issue $27 million in COPs, a form of borrowing that doesn’t mandate a vote of the people. Its spending plan this year featured a $1.9 million expenditure as a payment toward the debt.

The COPs weren’t issued because LandCo never put the $16 million in the bank for the OTC enhancements, and the USOC refused to sign a lease for the headquarters building. LandCo sued the USOC and the city in March, and it dropped the USOC from its lawsuit in June as the USOC and the city pieced their deal back together.

Many questions remain unanswered about the revised agreement. How will the city raise the $3 million in the second phase of OTC improvements? When will they be done? Which developer will put the finishing touches on the headquarters building?

Asked about an OTC timetable, Streeter said, “Once we have the money, we would begin work as soon as the plans are completed and the necessary permits are obtained. … It all depends on how soon the financing mechanism goes into place.”
—
Gazette reporter Daniel Chacon
contributed to this story.