Five years ago, when Denver was competing against Chicago for Boeing Co.’s new headquarters, a former chief executive of United Airlines lent his support to Denver. Chicago won that fight.
Now Denver again finds itself going up against the Windy City for a major company headquarters – that of United Airlines.
In 2001, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens wrapped up the Boeing loss by saying, “We’ll try to learn from this and see what we could have done better, if anything.”
Chicago had ponied up $53 million in incentives to draw Boeing’s headquarters from Seattle, while Denver offered $28 million.
Boeing’s chief executive at the time said there was no single deciding factor for Chicago but that an important one was the “ability to get anywhere in the world.”
Other factors were the area’s business environment, transportation infrastructure, education, culture and climate.
Has Denver learned any lessons from five years ago, and does it have a chance to beat out Chicago this time?
In the Boeing effort, Denver enlisted big local names including Pete Coors, Pat Bowlen, Charlie Ergen and John Elway, along with the former United chief executive, Gerald Greenwald.
Big, public-funded incentives are not a part of Denver’s strategy to recruit companies to move here, John Huggins, head of Denver’s Office of Economic Development, told The Denver Post last year.
“We do modest incentives on a selected basis,” he said then. “That won’t change.”
Huggins declined to comment Wednesday on whether the city would offer incentives to help lure United’s headquarters.
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-820-1488 or kyamanouchi@denverpost.com.
