TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/052989/05298900.037

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 5.0 KB | 88 lines

NATION, Page 33

Urban Growing Pains

Denver decides to take off, but booming Seattle hunkers down


    It was a slambang political fight, complete with barrages of
print and TV ads, one crafted by George Bush's campaign guru Roger
Ailes. Colorado Governor Roy Romer and Denver Mayor Federico Pena
politicked incessantly around town. When the vote came in, several
hundred giddy campaign workers shouted themselves hoarse in a
jammed downtown hotel ballroom. The turnout, 41% of registered
voters, would have been respectable for a congressional or
gubernatorial election. In fact, the balloting was a special
election in which Denver residents last Tuesday voted 63% to 37%
to build a $2.3 billion new airport -- the first to be constructed
in the U.S. since Dallas-Fort Worth airport was finished in 1974.

    But on the same day, 1,000 miles to the northwest, the spirit
of Western boosterism took a fall almost as jarring as the Denver
vote was exhilarating. In another special election, Seattle voters
approved severe restrictions on the height and size of buildings
that can be put up in the downtown area during the next ten years.
The limits were contained in a citizens' initiative put forward as
an alternative to a less restrictive plan favored by the city
council and Mayor Charles Royer. With a turnout of only 23%, the
tougher rules were approved 62% to 38%.

    Had the two cities traded economies, the results might have
been reversed. Denver, once riding high on an energy boom, has been
slumping for the past four years. Metropolitan-area employment has
shrunk by 55,000 jobs, to a present total of 939,100, and real
estate values have shriveled; the average Denver house is priced
at $79,900, down 15% in two years. Last year more people moved out
of the area than moved in for the first time since the Depression
years of the 1930s. In that climate, voters bought the promises of
Romer and Pena that a new airport would mean jobs and prosperity.
"What you heard today from the voters was the sound of Denver
taking off!" shouted Pena on election night. Branding such talk a
"psychological aphrodisiac," retired Rear Admiral Richard Young,
who led the opposition, declared, "Somehow, by voting for the
airport, there is the feeling everybody is going to be
jump-started, and everyone is going to be prosperous."

    In Seattle the economy is already sparking along. Area
joblessness is 4.6%, a 20-year low; major employer Boeing is
operating at an all-time high percentage of capacity; and hundreds
of thousands of new residents have moved in during the past few
years. Downtown, a state convention center, a shopping mall and
underground bus tunnels are under construction. The area has been
so torn up that some residents refer to it as "little Beirut."

    Councilman Jim Street, a proponent of the construction
limitations, explains that many citizens "believe the direction of
the city has been parting from their values -- open space,
reasonable traffic, retaining the characters of the neighborhoods,
a downtown that's (built on) a more human scale." Says Barbara
Dingfield, an opponent of the restrictions: "In 1972, during the
Boeing bust, we would have voted to increase building heights, we
would have voted for an airport. A lot of that is driven by what
the sense of the local economy is."

    In Denver, despite the economy's woes, the new airport still
faces determined opposition. It will be a mammoth project, far
bigger than Chicago's O'Hare and Dallas-Fort Worth combined.
Building it will entail shutting down the 60-year-old Stapleton
Airport, the nation's fifth busiest.

    Romer, Pena and other boosters decried the frequent and long
delays that have already become legendary at Stapleton, a point
seconded by Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner on a visit
during the campaign. The field's two main runways are too close
together for simultaneous instrument landings; in bad weather only
one can be used. Airport planners contend that a new field could
be financed without any tax money. They expect to receive $500
million from Washington and to raise the rest by selling bonds that
would be redeemed by fees charged to airlines and concessionaires.

    Opponents warned that the cost might well balloon to $3
billion, and doubted that Washington would fork over anything like
$500 million. (Skinner promised that "the Federal Government is
going to help in a very substantial way," but he studiously avoided
being pinned down to a figure.) Thus, they insisted, the project
would force tax increases that Denver residents could not afford.
The two main airlines servicing Denver, United and Continental,
point out that Stapleton still has 25 unused gates; some expansion
of runway capacity, they argued, was all that was needed. But the
vote made it obvious that few citizens listened. It is only in the
nation's booming Seattles, it seems, that residents can ask, What
price growth? In the depressed Denvers, even the hope of growth
seems to be worth almost any price.