El Pomar chief says foundation stepped in to save USOC deal
Two weeks before a critical fundraising deadline last year in the city’s deal with the U.S. Olympic Committee, Mayor Lionel Rivera had raised just a fraction of the $3 million needed.
So he, again, turned to the El Pomar Foundation.
And it agreed to ante up the full $3 million to meet a Nov. 18 deadline and prevent the complex agreement from unraveling a second time, El Pomar CEO Bill Hybl said Friday.
“We stepped in because they were woefully short of the fundraising goal,” Hybl said, recounting how and why the grant was made. “He approached us to be helpful. I think we surprised him by giving the whole amount to make sure the deal didn’t fail.”
The foundation’s nine-member board of trustees unanimously agreed to the grant. “We moved very quickly because we didn’t want to see this go back to the drawing board and have to be renegotiated again,” Hybl said.
El Pomar and Hybl were obvious targets for Rivera’s efforts to salvage the deal and he said last week that he never stopped asking for their help.
“That was all part of the fundraising,” Rivera said. “I committed to raise the money for the USOC and that’s what I did, whether it was speaking to El Pomar or anyone else on the donor list.”
The Colorado Springs-based El Pomar had earlier kicked in $2 million for other parts of city’s deal to keep the USOC headquarters from leaving town. Hybl, its chief, is President Emeritus of USOC, having served two terms as president, and revered in the Olympic world as one of its strongest supporters. Together, El Pomar and Hybl are well-known for their support of major civic projects such as the building of the Colorado Springs World Arena.
Hybl, who had just returned from a six-day trip to Vancouver to watch the Winter Olympics, which conclude Sunday, was upbeat about U.S. athletes, the U.S. Olympic leadership and what he said are the soon-to-materialize economic benefits of having the USOC headquarters in downtown Colorado Springs.
The headquarters are scheduled to move downtown from the Olympic Training Center at Boulder Street and Union Boulevard in mid-April.
The move will start paying economic dividends immediately by bringing more people to downtown to shop, eat and work; attracting USOC sponsors, Olympic sports organizations and others to downtown hotels and restaurants for meetings; and helping improve air service by boosting business travel, he said.
“People will be coming (to the headquarters) for business. This is a business that is downtown. This isn’t just national business, this is international business,” Hybl said. “This community doesn’t have a financial sector with insurance companies headquartered here, but we do have the U.S. Olympic Committee’s headquarters.”
He noted that the second El Pomar grant came with more strings attached. When it made its first grant the foundation had no role in negotiating with the city, Olympic Committee or project developer, LandCo Equity Partners, Hybl said.
But the foundation insisted that it be able to monitor the spending of its grant: “We are at the table now that we have this much money involved,” he said.
The $3 million El Pomar donated in November was added to a $500,000 state grant and $9.5 million in proceeds from the sale of $31.47 million in certificates of participation, a form of municipal debt that doesn’t require voter approval. That $13 million plus another $3 million due Sept. 18, 2011, will pay for improvements to the Olympic Training Center, including new housing units, an upgraded cafeteria for athletes, a renovated visitors center and a new entrance.
Hybl also is co-chair of a committee along with Phil Lane, whose family sold a local Pepsi distributorship in 2008, and Nechie Hall, CEO of a local public relations and advertising agency, that is trying to raise the second $3 million to meet the 2011 deadline. He said the three co-chairs are scheduled to meet in May to come up with strategies to raise the bulk of the funds from major donors before seeking contributions from the public.
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