COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—LandCo Equity Partners has filed a lawsuit against the city of Colorado Springs and the U.S. Olympic Committee, alleging that they’ve failed to uphold their end of an agreement to provide a new downtown headquarters for the sports organization.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Denver, asks that the city and the Colorado Springs-based USOC be ordered to comply with the terms of the March 31, 2008, agreement.
The suit claims the city has failed to reimburse LandCo for money it spent buying and renovating the building intended for the USOC. LandCo says it faces losing the building because it can’t repay a construction loan it took out to do the work.
The company is seeking unspecified damages.
Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera, who is named in the suit, said Friday that he was “disappointed.”
“I believe that we were going to work out a solution where the USOC could move into their headquarters and we would have the OTC (Olympic Training Center) plans done,” Rivera told The Gazette newspaper. “That was our plan.”
USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said the organization couldn’t comment until it had a chance to review the suit.
The Colorado Springs City Council planned a closed-door meeting Monday to discuss financial and legal issues surrounding LandCo and its chairman, Ray Marshall, and the status of the USOC headquarters deal.
The El Paso County district attorneys office this week said Marshall and LandCo were the subjects of a criminal investigation; however, details of the investigation were not released.
LandCo has said the investigation stems from “a few disgruntled investors” who made allegations against Marshall in connection with lawsuits they filed against him. The company said the allegations were “baseless and unfounded.”
The USOC, Marshall and the city agreed to the $53 million incentives deal last year with the goal of keeping the sports organization in Colorado Springs for 25 more years.
Under the agreement, LandCo was to build a new USOC headquarters and remodel another building into offices for Olympic national governing bodies. The work was expected to be completed by August.
LandCo also was to make $16 million worth of improvements at the USOC’s Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, which would include new housing for athletes and an expanded cafeteria. That construction has not yet started.
———
Information from: The Gazette,
