Despite suit, USOC plan is still on

The Colorado Springs City Council still plans to go forward with its $53 million deal with LandCo Equity Partners to build a new headquarters for the U.S. Olympic Committee and make other improvements to Olympic facilities despite a lawsuit filed Friday by LandCo against the city and the USOC.

"We're going to just keep moving forward on the deal we have," Councilwoman Jan Martin said Monday after a three-hour closed-door meeting to discuss the lawsuit with LandCo Equity Partners and other financial and legal problems with the project.

Mayor Lionel Rivera, who dashed to his car after the meeting to make an appointment, said the city's strategy was "to do what we promised the USOC a year ago." When asked for details, he said he had to leave.

LandCo and three related partnerships sued the city and the USOC on Friday in U.S. District Court in Denver, alleging that the city and committee have failed to live up to their ends of the agreement, putting LandCo and Chairman Ray Marshall in financial jeopardy. The suit asks the court to force the city and the USOC to comply with the agreement's terms and seeks unspecified damages.

Under the agreement, LandCo is renovating an empty building at 27 S. Tejon St. into a six-story headquarters for the USOC, remodeling a former Colorado Springs Utilities building to house national governing bodies for Olympic sports and is supposed to make $16 million in improvements to the USOC training center in central Colorado Springs.

Councilman Tom Gallagher, who left the meeting early, said the city remains "committed to keeping the Olympic committee here."

"It's our star; it's our crown jewel," he said. "It doesn't belong in Chicago, it doesn't belong in New York, it doesn't belong in Houston or Los Angeles. It belongs in Colorado Springs."

He said there have been "hiccups" in the project and the city, LandCo and the USOC "have different priorities."

Gallagher said LandCo and its executives "are frustrated at this point. But let's be fair, all the other crap aside, investments are investments and they are the only guys that have anything in this thing. They've got millions pumped into it."

Gallagher and three other council members wanted to discuss the project in open session rather than meet behind closed doors.

Gallagher, Darryl Glenn, Scott Hente and Jerry Heimlicher asked for at least part of the discussion about the status of a $53 million agreement reached a year ago to keep the USOC from leaving the Springs be discussed in open session as the 4 p.m. meeting started.

"Too much of this has happened behind the scenes," Glenn said before the meeting. He requested that the meeting be split between open and closed sessions to discuss public information and give a brief update of the project.

Heimlicher said the meeting should be open because "so much of this has already been in the press. Let's let the public hear the other side."

Six of the nine council members have to agree before the council can meet in closed session. After Assistant City Manager Mike Anderson said he wasn't prepared to discuss any part of the matter in open session, Hente changed his vote. Colorado law permits legal issues and negotiations to be discussed behind closed doors.

Council members scheduled the meeting Wednesday amid a foreclosure, liens and lawsuits against Marshall and a series of partnerships he controls. Later that day, the 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office confirmed Marshall and LandCo are targets of a criminal investigation, prompting Councilman Randy Purvis on Thursday to call for the city to do its investigation of Marshall's financial and legal problems.