Aurora – Mayor Ed Tauer’s day started with a plane flight and ended with another, back and forth to Washington, D.C., on a mission to secure what is arguably the biggest coup of his tenure in office.
“This is really a neat day,” Tauer said from his cellphone, minutes after signing an agreement for a new Veterans Affairs hospital in Aurora.
Tauer’s mission has been nearly nonstop for several months, surviving deal-endangering walkouts and seemingly endless negotiation. Monday, the details were still being hammered out by attorneys.
“I said, ‘Guys, we know what we want; we know what they want. Stop being lawyers,”‘ he said.
Tauer was told to head to D.C. the next day for the announcement, or the deal would be put off to some other date in the unforeseeable future.
He got on the 8 a.m. flight.
The VA hospital will stand in a row along East Colfax Avenue with the new University of Colorado Health Sciences Center at Fitzsimons and the under-construction Children’s Hospital. The campus that touts itself as “a square mile of life science” also will include a bioscience park in what many say will become one of the nation’s premier medical campuses.
The economic impact will be huge, said Wendy Mitchell, president of the Aurora Economic Development Council.
Nadine Caldwell, an Aurora councilwoman whose ward includes Fitzsimons, marveled at the scope.
“Isn’t it great to have three of the biggest hospitals in the state sitting in Fitzsimons?” she said.
But there could be one drawback: The hospital would be on the site of the city’s Fitzsimons Pool, a six-lane indoor facility that gets about 500 swimmers a day. Tauer said the pool likely would be part of the negotiation.
People swimming Tuesday afternoon weren’t receptive to the idea of a hospital in place of their beloved pool.
“There’s a lot of other places they could put it,” said Dennis Foster of Aurora. “They always take things away from the kids.”
But Sandy Nicholls, whose father-in-law is a veteran, said a new VA hospital is needed.
“I’m glad they’ll be building a new one,” she said. “It seems to make sense that they’ll have all the hospitals together. But, personally, I’d be sad to see the pool go.”
Staff writer Jeremy Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
