Inferiority complexes are so unattractive. That’s reason enough for Commerce City voters to have wisely rejected a ballot measure Tuesday that would have forsaken the city’s name.
Changing the name would not divorce the city from the industrial facilities that put it on the map: the dominating oil refinery, a flour mill and a large railyard.
A rose by any other name would still be, well, Commerce City.
Surely it was unintentional, but the name-change campaign itself has cast a pall of self-doubt on the progress Commerce City is making.
Underway is a 917-acre project near Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge that includes a new civic center, an 18,000-seat soccer stadium for the Colorado Rapids, new commercial and retail space and a host of youth sports fields.
The city, just north of Denver, is growing by leaps and bounds, fueled by the development of nice homes that are affordable by metro standards. In 1990, the town population was 16,466. By 2005, it had risen to 34,189.
The effort to put a name-change on the ballot was led by lawyer Jim Benson, a resident since 1974 who collected the signatures necessary to put it before voters. But according to Benson, it was driven by the reactions of people who have moved into new subdivisions, like Reunion.
“Saying you live in Commerce City is a nose-wrinkler,” Benson told The Post.
One might think such a response might be mitigated by residents’ access to vast tracts of open space, their lovely views of the Front Range or the spacious yards they can afford with their new homes.
In any case, the ballot question wasn’t a reasonable one to begin with. Voters were asked to ditch Commerce City for a moniker to be chosen later. Who knows what the status-seekers would have come up with for the next ballot.
The best estimate for pricing the name change came in at nearly $1 million, money that would be better spent on park development, youth programs or any number of projects.
The challenge to the Commerce City name was an affront to the town’s history, and the insecurity borne by the name-change effort proved to be a civic turnoff.
We applaud traditionalists who rejected the measure by a margin of more than 2-to-1. We hope those who pitched the name change will refocus their civic energy into tangible efforts to improve the community.
