Aurora – Denver and Aurora were once the Hatfields and McCoys of the metro region – cities with a shared border and a mutual disgust – but that strained relationship is easing.
On Wednesday, Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer announced a potential water agreement that would allow Aurora and Denver to share water facilities and enable Aurora to buy Denver’s water when there’s excess.
The announcement, made during Tauer’s State of the City speech, is the latest in a series of moves bringing Denver and Aurora together on more than just the map.
Another sign of the new era will be on view today, when the mayors give a joint breakfast speech about the economic impact of their collaboration.
Today, Denver and Aurora cooperate on sales-tax collection, on the building of the $1.5 billion High Point development near Denver International Airport and on buying gasoline in bulk.
They also have “a no-poaching agreement” that forbids the cities from offering businesses incentives to leave one city for the other.
“The future of our entire region is working together,” Tauer said. “We can bring more resources to bear working together than any of us can working alone. … Our people cross borders every day. If their lives cross lines, our thinking should also.”
Tauer and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper are allies, a relationship that regional economists say helps the entire metro region – now classified by the U.S. Census Bureau as the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area, joining other twin cities such as Dallas-Fort Worth and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The populations of Denver and Aurora are about 557,000 people and nearly 300,000, respectively.
“The relationship between Aurora and Denver, for much of the metropolitan area, is symbolic of whether the whole metro area can work together,” said Hickenlooper, who met with Tauer before he was elected mayor to discuss collaboration.
“One thing you learn in the restaurant business,” Hickenlooper said, “is there is no margin in having enemies.”
It wasn’t always like that.
Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and Aurora Mayor Paul Tauer, Ed Tauer’s father, were legendary in their differences.
The former Aurora mayor recently said the relationship “was, at times, rather strained. … I think there was some competition. Maybe it was competition, and maybe it was the personalities.”
Webb couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.
Hickenlooper has talked to both former mayors about what went wrong.
“They both felt they had been embarrassed by one another,” he said. “An expression of that competition was … sometimes the officials would try to portray the other in a negative light, and their cities.”
Ed Tauer and Hickenlooper wanted to be better neighbors.
“It’s really thawed because of the personal chemistry between Mayor Hickenlooper and Mayor Tauer,” said John Huggins, Denver’s economic-development director.
In December 2003, Hickenlooper symbolically – and temporarily – renamed Tower Road between the two cities in honor of Paul Tauer.
In January 2004, Hickenlooper and Aurora’s new mayor jointly announced the combined High Point development on 1,800 acres shared by the two cities.
The collaboration continues.
For the past two years, the cities have saved thousands of dollars by buying bulk gasoline for their fleets. They have worked together on building roads in the Stapleton area and are looking to team up with the state to develop a part of the Lowry campus that’s in Aurora.
“Together we are stronger than we are alone,” said Wendy Mitchell, president of the Aurora Economic Development Council. “When we go out and market the Denver metro area, it is important to go out and present it as one cohesive community.”
Now, the two are looking to the metro region’s other highly sought-after liquid: water.
Tauer said the Aurora City Council on Monday will consider an operational agreement with the Denver Water Board that would link part of Aurora’s water system to Denver’s.
The agreement would allow Aurora to buy Denver’s excess water and allow both cities to share a ditch and pipeline.
It also would let Denver tap into Aurora’s $830 million Prairie Waters project in the future.
“By doing that, it would make both systems more efficient and create more water yield for our citizens,” Tauer said in his speech. “That is an idea that absolutely has never happened before.”
Staff writer Jeremy P. Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
