Dallas – United Airlines CEO Glenn Tilton and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper will work together to recruit companies to relocate to Denver, targeting firms in regions with struggling airline hubs.
“Why don’t we target these companies?” Tilton said in an interview Saturday at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
Tilton said officials of United and the city should “mutually extol the virtues” of Denver and Denver International Airport, which Tilton described as United’s “second home” after Chicago.
“The low-hanging fruit,” Hickenlooper said in a separate interview, “are cities that have struggling hubs,” such as St. Louis, where American Airlines severely cut service in 2003. Other targets might be Charlotte, N.C., and Pittsburgh, both hubs of US Airways, which recently exited bankruptcy and has merged with America West.
United is expected to exit bankruptcy early next year.
Neither Tilton nor Hickenlooper would cite companies or industries they might go after. Hickenlooper said Denver would “need to do the work” of recruitment and that Tilton would “fly in as part of the closing” team.
“It’s to die for,” said Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. “When you get a CEO from one of your most prominent companies to get on a plane and help sell the city, it’s invaluable.”
“United was involved in recruiting Boeing to Chicago” in 2001, said John Huggins, who heads Denver’s office of economic development. Denver and Dallas were also-rans in that hotly bid contest in which Chicago offered $63 million in incentives.
Huggins said big, publicly funded incentives are not a part of Denver’s strategy to recruit companies. “We do modest incentives on a selected basis,” he said. “That won’t change. … Most job growth occurs with companies that are already in a location.”
By working with Denver to recruit companies now based in hubs run by United competitors, United has a chance to maintain and win corporate travel business and could conceivably offer its own incentives.
“The bigger companies are the ones who travel a lot, who would be interested in proximity to DIA and access to the (United) network,” Huggins said.
Engineering giant Fluor Corp., No. 241 on the list of Fortune 500 companies, moved its headquarters from Aliso Viejo, Calif., to near Dallas earlier this year. Denver had been trying to recruit Fluor for years.
“We have the facilities” in Denver, Tilton said. “I would have liked to see Fluor move to Denver.”
Among the reasons Fluor picked Dallas was access to international destinations from DFW airport. But would companies relocate to Denver when DIA doesn’t have the same international reach?
“It’s a chicken-and-egg problem,” said Tilton, meaning that increased demand for international flights for corporate business travel would drive supply at DIA.
Tilton was in Dallas to speak to a group of 150 business and government officials from Denver who were there since Thursday on a leadership-exchange trip that ended Saturday.
After the event, Tilton spoke to The Denver Post regarding United’s hub in Denver, which employs 5,400 people.
He said he was not concerned by last week’s announcement that Dallas-based discount giant Southwest Airlines would begin service at DIA next year. “We compete up and down the West Coast with Southwest,” said Tilton, adding that 80 percent of United’s network is in competition with low-cost carriers.
Business editor Stephen Keating can be reached at 303-820-1306 or skeating@denverpost.com.
