DENVER—Despite deep budget cuts, Colorado is moving ahead with plans to build a new state history museum and judicial complex, a project state officials expect to create about 2,000 jobs over the next four years.
Gov. Bill Ritter and state lawmakers helped break ground for the new museum on Wednesday, a day after the governor announced he would eliminate 266 state jobs and cut medical and prison services to save $320 million.
The $338 million project isn’t affected by the cuts because it’s being paid for with higher court fees and gambling revenue, not regular tax dollars that pay for the part of the budget that Ritter is slashing. The federal government is also paying 35 percent of the interest under a stimulus bond program, financing that will save the state $77 million.
Colorado Historical Society Edward Nichols said the new, larger history museum—across Broadway from the Denver Art Museum—will be able to host traveling “blockbuster” exhibits. Besides the immediate construction jobs, he said the finished buildings will bring more people—from judges to visitors—and their dollars to the area.
Despite the state’s economic problems, Nichols said it makes sense to move ahead with the project now with the help of the subsidized bond program.
He compared it to how the society used New Deal-era funding during the Great Depression to expand the museum’s offerings by hiring artisans to build dioramas, which continue to be some of the museum’s most popular exhibits. Historians were also commissioned to fan out across the state to conduct oral histories.
The project was talked about long before the recession hit and started to take shape last year, when a bipartisan team of lawmakers passed a bill to increase court filing fees to pay for it. It then ran into trouble as credit tightened last fall and interest rates rose. After the stimulus act was passed, state treasurer Cary Kennedy turned to the Build America Bonds program.
Colorado lawmakers aren’t technically allowed to enter into long-term debt but they’ve gotten around that with a kind of lease-purchase plan by selling certificates of participation, or COPs, to pay for large construction projects. In July, Kennedy’s office sold $300 million of taxable COPs through the stimulus bonds program to raise money for the project.
The remainder of the project will be funded with non-taxable COPs, the kind normally used to pay for government construction projects.
Each year, Colorado lawmakers will make payments on the COPs by appropriating money raised by the fees and gaming revenue. If they don’t make the payments, investors would be able to take over the museum and judicial complex.
The new museum will be built a block away from its current site, a property it shares with the Colorado Supreme Court and Court of Appeals building. The new judicial complex will include those courts as well as administrative offices, the public defender and state Attorney General’s office. Work on that project will begin next year.
Construction on the history museum will begin Sept. 1. Workers are still sifting through the cellars of a series of row houses found beneath the site, which were well preserved by the parking lot, state archaeologist Susan Collins said. Any objects they find will become part of the museum’s collection.
