20th Anniversary: Recession inspired alliance to create research park

Business Report Correspondent

BOULDER — In every community’s history, circumstances create situations where adversaries can become allies. In the city of Boulder, 1986 was one of those times.

For what in historical terms could be called “a brief and shining moment,” in 1986 the city, the University of Colorado and the Boulder Chamber of Commerce were united in one effort, that being the revival of Boulder County’s moribund economy. Unemployment, as a result of job losses in the thousands from the county’s high-tech companies, was high. Sales tax revenues in cities across the county were off, and the real estate market was stagnant at best.

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Even the county’s ski area, Eldora, didn’t open for business — for the first time in 25 years — because of a failed deal to sell the area for $5.2 million.

What to do to revive the community’s flagging fortunes was a topic that spurred solutions from almost every sector. But it was probably the most unlikely of the three major players, the city, the chamber and the university, that appeared at the time to present the most hopeful option.

The University of Colorado decided it wanted to build a university-related research park on 140 acres it owned east of 30th Street. The parcel was bounded by Arapahoe Avenue on the north, Colorado Avenue on the south, Smiley Court student housing and 30th Street on the west, and Foothills Parkway on the east.

At the time, it was home to the city’s Stazio Ball Fields and little else. Now it houses Qwest’s Jack McAllister Advanced Technology Center, research and development operations for Sybase, CU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, or LASP, CU’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy and the CU Biology Department’s research greenhouse.

The creation and subsequent approval of the so-called memorandum of understanding between the city and CU that gave the go-ahead to the project was hailed as a major breakthrough not only in university-city relations, but in creating a framework from which to grow a more diversified economy. Indeed, the research park accord was considered so important at the time; it was named the top news story in the county for 1986.

Here’s how it happened.

Developing university-related research parks was all the rage in the mid-1980s. Western state universities such as Arizona State and the University of Utah had developed parks with success, patterning them after original innovators Stanford and Princeton. They seemed to be win-win solutions for communities and universities wherever they were placed. The community got jobs, and the universities got money and multiple avenues for technology transfer from faculty to industry. CU, after some initial reluctance, wanted one, too.

In 1985, then Vice Chancellor for Administration Ted Tedesco, who also was a former Boulder city manager, took a plan for a research park that had been in the works for a couple of years to the CU Board of Regents. The regents tabled it. But soon after new CU President Gordon Gee took the helm of the university, it was resurrected.

“(Gee) was very interested in the university’s role in economic development because of the direct benefits it has to the university, but also because of the other benefits of community and public relations,” says former CU Vice President for Administration Stuart Takeuchi, who now is a private management consultant.

Tedesco had left the university to become head of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Authority, so Gee put the research park plan into the hands of Takeuchi, who had just inherited Tedesco’s job. “It was my first project on my new job, and I started at zero,” Takeuchi recalls.

The plan was that park’s land would be owned by CU and leased by third-party tenants in the park. The tenants would be responsible for contracting and constructing their own buildings, according to CU codes and standards, and would have to have either an existing research relationship with university faculty or the potential to develop one.

The hitch was that the city wanted the third parties to be bound by city rules, too. CU, being a state-owned entity, is not bound by city of Boulder regulations and ordinances. It was a hitch that took considerable ironing out.

“Piper and I had this standing joke about how we would start our meetings,” Takeuchi says. “I’d say, ?OK Jim, let’s start off as usual: Go to hell.’ And then he’d say ?Go to hell.’ Then we’d say, ?Now that we feel better, let’s sit down and figure this thing out. Let’s figure out how to acknowledge that there are disagreements about who has what authority and develop a strategy that doesn’t require answers to those questions.”

The memorandum of understanding that came from these meetings Takeuchi describes as an artful piece of governance, “as much for what it doesn’t say as for what it does.”

Essentially, the document acknowledges the “positive” relationship between CU and the city, and then goes on to say that costs of off-site transportation, utility improvements will be shared and that the university would cooperate “so that the spirit of the land-use regulations of the city are followed.”

The only issue that threatened to put the kibosh on the agreement turned out to be approval of the memorandum by the Boulder’s city council. Several council members were outraged that the agreement had gotten to the stage it had without council’s input. “I remember a heated discussion with Jim Piper when we found out about it,” says Steve Pomerance, former city council member, and the only one to ultimately vote against the memorandum. “We were faced at a meeting with approving this thing, and we hadn’t looked at it carefully and hadn’t discussed it.”

Wetlands protection and sharing the cost of site-specific traffic improvements were the two major stumbling blocks. After some negotiating, both were agreed to by CU’s regents. Pomerance believes the city got the best agreement it could at the time.

“It was somewhat hard fought,” says Linda Jourgensen, former mayor. “But council wasn’t really outspoken about it once the environmental thing got sorted out.” As a result, on a 7-to-1 vote, in December 1986, the park plan was approved.

Considering the sparks that recently have flown between the city and CU on such development projects as the proposed south campus and the redevelopment of the Grandview area adjacent to main campus, the research park agreement was smooth sailing.

Strange bedfellows, yes. But, according to Jourgensen, the times required them. “That really was a period of recession. In 1985 the city had a zero increase in sales tax. We had to cut the 1986 city budget enormously,” she says. “There was no desire to keep business growth down then.”