AURORA — There are a lot of good things happening in this city of 300,000 people, officials say. It’s just that hardly anyone is noticing.
This summer, for example, Aurora’s Murphy Creek Golf Course is hosting the prestigious U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship.
Even the new Anschutz Medical Campus that calls Aurora home is something the city proudly puffs out its chest about.
But there are no main attractions here. No theme parks for the kids. No ballparks or any professional sports team that could attract people and their money.
But city leaders are trying to change that — and bring in more business at the same time. They are studying whether to create a convention and visitors bureau to attract more events, hotels and money-spending patrons.
“I think that is really ambitious, and I like ambitious things,” City Councilwoman Molly Markert said. “I hope it will produce the results we want.”
The city recently spent about $20,000 on a study about developing a five-year marketing plan and to explore creating a convention and visitors bureau, which would be a separate entity from the city.
What Rick Hanson of the Hanson Group found was that Aurora has little in place right now to attract the destination traveler.
“There’s no reason to come there other than to go to somewhere else,” Hanson said. “If you don’t have any venues, you don’t get any of that other stuff.”
Part of the problem is that Aurora does not have a convention center and may not even want to build one, because they typically lose money. But what they do bring are the travelers who spend money to sleep, eat and be entertained.
At a recent meeting, city officials seemed cold to the idea of a convention center similar in size to the Colorado Convention Center. But they supported a smaller conference center, like one being considered at a hotel across from the medical campus.
Aurora’s largest hotels can handle only about 300 people for meetings, Hanson said.
“There’s no reason why Aurora couldn’t have a Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton,” Hanson said. “From a hotel standpoint, if hotels see you have a convention and visitors bureau, they’re more likely to put in a higher-end hotel.”
Aurora does have a Visitors Promotion Advisory Board, which is funded by an $8 per $100 lodgers tax that goes into the city’s general coffers. It generates about $4 million a year, and the board gets about 10 percent of that for tourism promotion.
Kevin Hougen, chairman of the VPAB and president of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce, said with a world-class medical campus, an international airport and Buckley Air Force Base in and around Aurora, the time may be right for a convention and visitors bureau.
“I think we have a real opportunity here,” Hougen said. “Aurora is a tourist mecca that nobody knows about.”
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com
