El Pomar chairman will help lead further USOC fund-raising effort

El Pomar Foundation has agreed to donate the entire $3 million required to complete the next step in a complex deal to keep the U.S. Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs, El Pomar said in a press conference Monday morning.

Also, El Pomar Chairman Bill Hybl said he will join an advertising and public relations executive and former soft drink executive to raise another $3 million by September 2011 required under a revamped $42.3 million incentives agreement the USOC and Colorado Springs reached in August.

The $3 million from El Pomar will be part of a $13 million payment the city must make to the USOC by Nov. 18. The remainder, $10 million, will come from a $500,000 state grant and the remaining $9.5 million in proceeds from a city agency’s Oct. 13 sale of $31.47 million in certificates of participation, a form of debt that doesn’t require voter approval.

El Pomar, a $450 million charitable foundation, said it will donate the $3 million to keep the agreement from unraveling, boosting its overall commitment to the USOC deal to $5 million. Hybl said he has already been in contact with “a number of Denver-area foundations” about raising the final $3 million and believes the fundraising effort “will get support from throughout the state,” including help from Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper in securing donations.

Hybl will co-chair the fundraising committee with Nechie Hall, CEO of Vladimir Jones, a Springs-based advertising and public relations agency; and Phil Lane, who ran a family-owned Pepsi distributorship in Colorado and New Mexico before it was sold last year to Pepsi Bottling Group. They will help Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera and Hickenlooper secure donations needed to meet a mid-September 2011 deadline to raise the money.

That $3 million, plus the $13 million due Nov. 18, will be used for improvements to the Olympic Training Center east of downtown Colorado Springs, including 166 housing units and upgraded cafeteria for married and single athletes, a renovated visitors center and a new Union Boulevard entrance. The USOC is expected to move into a recently renovated headquarters building at 27 S. Tejon St.

Although Hybl didn’t rule out further El Pomar donations for the USOC deal, he said the foundation’s Board of Trustees feels that the $5 million it has committed so far “is just about right.” El Pomar also gave $1.5 million to pay part of the $3 million cost of renovating a former Colorado Springs Utilities building to house offices for Olympic sports organizations and $500,000 to help pay the USOC’s moving expenses as it relocates its headquarters to downtown.

Since the revamped USOC incentives deal was inked,  Rivera had led a citywide effort to raise $1.5 million. However, the mayor had raised only about $280,000 as of late September.

Last year, El Pomar gave away $25.5 million to various charities and nonprofit groups across Colorado, including a significantly higher amount for social services than in the previous year. The USOC grant will not result in the foundation reducing its social services-related grants this year when a severe recession has increased the need for services provided by those groups, an El Pomar source said.

El Pomar and the USOC have ties stretching back more than 30 years — the foundation gave the group $1 million in the late 1970s to complete its move from New York to the Springs and El Pomar CEO Bill Hybl has served as USOC’s volunteer president.

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