USOC HQ: The outside's done; Now it's time for the inside

GE Johnson Construction Co. Inc. has been hired to complete the interior of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s downtown headquarters, one of the final steps to completing a long-delayed $42.3 million deal to keep the organization in Colorado Springs.

The city of Colorado Springs will pay the Colorado Springs-based contractor $2.7 million for the work, which must be completed by March 1 so the USOC can move from its longtime central Colorado Springs offices to a just-renovated building at 27 S. Tejon St. GE Johnson, which last month finished converting the former two-story furniture store into a six-story office building, was selected from 12 bidders, the city announced Thursday in a press release.

“We will put many of the people who had been working on this project back to work,” said GE Johnson President Jim Johnson. “Hopefully, this will be final chapter.”

The interior work comes after the City of Colorado Springs Public Facilities Authority bought the top five floors in the building Oct. 15 for $18.8 million from LandCo Equity Partners LLC. The five floors will be leased to the USOC until 2039 for a nominal fee. LandCo will retain the basement and first floor of the building and has hired Sierra Commercial Real Estate Inc. to lease the space. Mark O’Donnell, leasing agent for the building, said two lease proposals are now in negotiations.

Assistant City Manager Mike Anderson, who has coordinated the city’s efforts with the USOC, said LandCo received no cash from the purchase — United Western Bank received $15.1 million to pay off its construction loan on the project, GE Johnson received $3.28 million it was still owed for work the company and its subcontractors completed on the building, and the rest went to pay off liens that other contractors had filed on work for which they hadn’t been paid.

The authority raised $31.47 million Oct. 13 by selling certificates of participation, a type of debt that doesn’t require voter approval, to finance the purchase and complete the rest of the city’s deal with the USOC. As part of that deal, the authority bought the Police Operations Center and a fire station from the city on Oct. 9 to use as collateral for the certificates and will lease them back to the city. That element of the deal triggered a lawsuit that has since been dismissed and appealed.

City taxpayers will repay the certificates starting with a $1.54 million payment next year; the payments average $2.15 million for the next 30 years. The certificates carry an average interest rate of 4.63 percent, which Anderson said was “significantly less” than the city had expected to pay; the city’s 2010 budget included $2.2 million for the first payment as a “worst-case scenario” if rates had spiked instead of declining sharply just as the certificates were issued.

“The project is moving into a new phase now and we feel good about that,” Anderson said. “Most of our focus has been on getting the financing completed so we could get to this stage. I am confident the headquarters will be done on time so we can get the USOC moved in.”

The headquarters is the centerpiece of a $53 million incentives package agreed to in March 2008 by city officials, LandCo and the USOC to keep the organization in the Springs for at least another 25 years. The deal, which was revamped in August into the current $42.3 million, 30-year package, also includes another building west of downtown to house Olympic sports organizations and $16 million in improvements to the Olympic Training Center east of downtown.

The Copestone Co. completed $3 million in remodeling to a former Colorado Springs Utilities building at 30 S. Cimino Drive in July and is now finishing work from a recent walk-through with project’s architect, RNL Design, Anderson said. That work should be completed in a month or so, allowing national governing bodies for badminton, boxing, judo, karate, taekwondo and weightlifting to move into the building by year’s end. The city still owes Utilities more than $2 million for the building, he said.

The remaining $9.5 million raised from the certificates will be handed over the USOC toward the $16 million in training center work. Mayor Lionel Rivera is leading a private fundraising effort to generate another $1.5 million by Nov. 18 for the upgrades; that money would be matched by an El Pomar Foundation grant and a $500,000 state grant. Rivera said a month ago he raised $230,000, but he declined Thursday to comment on how much more he has raised since then. He said Thursday that he was "confident" the fundraising goal would be hit.

“The USOC is pleased with the progress the City has made on all aspects of this project. We remain hopeful that the USOC Headquarters building and the NGB building will be completed as expected, and the Olympic Training Center funding will be secured,” said Norm Bellingham, USOC chief operating officer. At the same time USOC is moving into its headquarters, “we also anticipate some of the smaller NGBs will move into their own new headquarters, and work will begin on critical improvements at the OTC.”

—

Contact the writer at 636-0234