Central Colorado’s three major cities offer experiences ranging from Denver’s increasingly metropolitan vibe to Boulder’s outdoorsiness and progressivism to Colorado Springs’s industry and scenic beauty. While located at high elevations, all three cities enjoy dramatic settings at the very edge of the plains of eastern Colorado, making the Rocky Mountain peaks behind them even more alluring.
Denver
Denver has seen it all: origins in a mini Gold Rush, a huge 19th century fire from which the city rebounded by building with brick, and further booms and busts fueled by silver, oil, uranium—and oil once more.
Today, Denver is the natural stopping place for air travelers changing planes and tourists looking for a base from which to explore the eastern Rockies. It enjoys a thriving, diversified economy and 300 days of sunshine per year, according to Angela Berardino, senior communications manager at the Denver CVB.
“We’re definitely in an upswing, and tourism is a huge part of that,” Berardino says. “We had 13 percent growth year-over-year from 2005 to 2006, and tourism is now the second-largest industry in the state.”
One big Denver draw is its pro baseball, basketball and football teams that attract fans from around the West and Midwest, as well as the Colorado Convention Center, a major-league convention and meeting space.
Denver will get a further shot in the arm from hosting the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in 2008—something planners should keep in mind, since the town is already sprucing up for thousands of visiting delegates and the entire world’s media. The DNC will occur exactly a century after Denver hosted the party’s 1908 gathering, and will be an opportunity to emphasize how far the city has come.
Denver International Airport will be most visitors’ first point of contact with the “Mile-High City.” Its tented buildings are inspired by the surrounding Front Range section of the Rocky Mountains and are an excellent introduction to a city whose nearby peaks serve as a rugged playground for Coloradoans. Many other visitors arrive by Amtrak trains such as the California Zephyr, which connects Denver with both Oakland, Calif., and Chicago daily.
The newly expanded, 2.2 million-square-foot Colorado Convention Center is by far the region’s largest meeting space, with a beautiful downtown location and 584,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space, roughly 7,300 hotel rooms within walking distance, and a 1,000-car parking garage.
Major downtown meetings properties include the 1,100-room Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center, which debuted in late 2005 with more than 60,000 square feet of meeting space; the 1,225-room Adam’s Mark–The Hotel of Denver; the 511-room Denver Grand Hyatt; the 613-room Denver Marriott City Center; the 241-room Brown Palace Hotel; and the 430-room Westin Tabor Center.
One of the city’s newcomers is The Curtis Hotel, a hip luxury property with 19,000 square feet of function space, while The Ritz-Carlton, Denver is scheduled to open in November with 13,000 square feet of meeting space.
On the tourism side, Denver continues its “Be a Denver Local” campaign to promote the city’s friendly, quirkier side, according to Berardino, while marketing on the group side focuses on Denver’s continually improving infrastructure, from the convention center to the city’s aggressive efforts to expand its light rail system.
Culturally speaking, Denver is also on the move with fresh cultural attractions, including a new wing that doubled the size of the Denver Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, which opens this month in a new location. It will feature a rooftop garden underwritten by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which will be available for groups. Additionally, the Clyfford Still Museum will house the famed abstract expressionist’s collection beginning in 2010.
Just east of downtown, City Park is a huge green space with plentiful outdoor gathering places as well as the Museum of Nature and Science.
If planners want to travel a bit farther for an outdoor event, they need only head to Red Rocks Amphitheatre, located just outside the city.
Colorado Springs
A little more than an hour’s drive south of Denver, Colorado Springs was voted by Money magazine as the best big city to live in for 2006 (with “big” defined as over 300,000 residents).
Colorado Springs is in the habit of attracting such awards. Although it used to be known primarily for the U.S. Air Force Academy and North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) headquarters in nearby Cheyenne Mountain, the city is now a high-tech manufacturing center for Intel, Hewlett-Packard and others, it hosts the U.S. Olympic Training Center, and it has attracted several large-scale “megachurches” that are practically small cities in their own right. All these entities increase the city’s diversity and contribute to its quality of life.
Tourism is another big draw here, and visitors would miss out if they didn’t at least drive toward Pikes Peak, a 14,115-foot-tall granite mountain that rises out of the plains (although it is clearly visible from downtown). They can continue that drive all the way to the top, a journey that takes an hour-and-a-half from downtown and yields sweeping views of the Front Range mountains and Colorado plains to the east.
Although Money considers Colorado Springs to be a “big” city, Amy Long, director of marketing and membership at Experience Colorado Springs at Pikes Peak CVB, says Colorado Springs retains its small-town characteristics.
“We brag about the fact that we have a small-town feel that you don’t have in Denver, with a range of first-class properties that you could find in Denver, but you definitely find here,” Long says. “It’s just a real refreshing experience in terms of low humidity, wide-open skies, mild climate, and abundant sunshine.”
The University of Colorado’s Colorado Springs campus and Colorado College provide liberal arts educations that balance the Air Force Academy’s military and technical focus. Also, the U.S. Olympic Training Center is a popular stop for visitors and the Colorado Springs CVB can help set up special tours if planners want to go beyond the standard public tours.
Garden of the Gods, a city park containing gorgeous red-rock formations that are the remnants of a long-vanished mountain range, is another must-see. Visitors can drive, bike or hike around and, remarkably, see the occasional bighorn sheep, all within Colorado Springs.
Places to stay and meet in Colorado Springs abound and occupy every price range, thanks to the city’s popularity with both luxury-focused travelers and youth groups. High-end options include The Broadmoor (which enjoys a AAA Five Diamond rating); the Antlers Hilton; The Cliff House at Pikes Peak (one of Travel + Leisure’s “Top 100 Hotels” worldwide); Cheyenne Mountain Resort; Colorado Springs Marriott; and SilverWood Hotel and Conference Center.
For large gatherings, planners can opt for the Colorado Springs World Arena, Phil Long Expo Center and Norris-Penrose Event Center. The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs also has a number of meeting venues.
For air arrivals, Colorado Springs Municipal Airport serves 2 million passengers per year.
Boulder
Boulder is a progressive town, partly due to its youth—63 percent of the city’s population is younger than 44, the Boulder CVB says—and partly from the 29,000-student University of Colorado at Boulder.
But don’t try pegging Boulder as just the “Berkeley of the Rockies.” Although the current mayor is a member of the Green Party, the Promise Keepers evangelical men’s movement was founded here, and the military magazine Soldier of Fortune has been headquartered in Boulder since its founding in 1970.
The city’s nearly ideal climate and proximity to the Rocky Mountains make it a center for athletic training, and seven out of 10 Boulder residents owns a bicycle. Indeed, Boulder was recently rated the No. 1 sports town in America by Outside magazine, and outdoor events like the huge Bolder Boulder 10K Race each Memorial Day weekend keep the city at the top of jocks’ minds nationwide.
This sportiness pays an immediate dividend to meeting planners, says Mary Ann Mahoney, executive director of the Boulder CVB.
“What we have found when people arrive in Boulder is that they see people outside, being active, riding their bike, walking everywhere, running,” she says. “And what happens with attendees is if they’re here for a couple of days, they start shifting their pattern to mirror [the locals] and be outside more. [They] get up earlier, go out for a walk or a run, and when they start participating in their sessions, they are more productive and clearer of thought.”
People think Boulder is in the mountains, Mahoney says, but it is really at the foot of the Rockies, and that amazing Front Range sunshine can melt even substantial snowfall away in time for dinner.
A compact downtown makes Boulder highly walkable and a great venue for outdoor team-building activities—not that activities all need to happen outdoors; groups can also visit the Cooking School of the Rockies for some culinary team building using locally grown produce.
In fact, the city features some great gourmet cuisine, and in particular is an epicenter for a fast-growing “field to table” movement that strives to serve food as close to where it was produced as possible, meaning groups can usually eat at restaurants that purchase ingredients directly from farmers’ markets.
The city also has several group venues, including the University of Colorado’s Coors Events Conference Center.
When the day is done, Boulder has over 2,000 guest rooms and deals are likely to be available in the off season, according to Mahoney.
“We have a lot of opportunities for meeting planners in the November to April time frame, where we’re not a ski destination, but a great urban culture with some great values,” she says.
Among the top meetings hotels in town are the Hotel Boulderado, St. Julien Hotel and Spa, Boulder Marriott, and Millennium Harvest House–Boulder.
The city is just a 30-minute to 40-minute drive from Denver International Airport, and in a few years, it will be connected to Denver’s growing light rail system.
For More Info
Boulder CVB 303.442.2911 www.bouldercoloradousa.com
Denver Metro CVB 303.892.1112 www.denver.org
Experience Colorado Springs at Pikes Peak CVB 719.635.7506 www.visitcos.com
