When most people reach the age of 85, their friends don’t wonder about their next big project. But Dan Ritchie is not most people. So the fact that he announced this month that he will step down as chairman of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in 2017 is unlikely to signal the end of his remarkable contributions to this community.
Indeed, he said as much at the time of his announcement.
Still, itap worth taking a moment to savor Ritchie’s record since he settled in Colorado in the 1980s. As both board chairman and CEO of the performing arts complex during much of the past decade, for example, he helped strengthen its commitment to arts education and diversify its programming. His stewardship is a major reason the DCPA is thriving.
But his impressive legacy at the DCPA actually pales before his role in transforming the University of Denver while chancellor there between 1989 and 2005.
DU was an institution with an uncertain future and modest reputation in the mid-1980s. With the exception of a few core structures that still grace the campus center, its buildings were mostly outdated and unimpressive. Ritchie engineered a wholesale renaissance, raising huge sums of money and sparing no expense to remake the school — both physically and academically — into the striking institution it is today.
He said he wanted to put up structures of such quality that they would last 500 years. By the look of it, he may have succeeded.
DU’s physical resurgence continues to this day, as anyone who drives by the institution can attest, but it was Ritchie who set the wheels in motion.
We haven’t seen eye to eye with Ritchie in every one of his many civic ventures. Amendment 71, which erodes the century-old right of Coloradans to amend their state constitution, was hatched by a group that Ritchie organized. Voters approved it last month. Although we suspect Coloradans may come to regret the new obstacles to the amendment process, Ritchie’s motives were never in doubt. The very name of his group, Building a Better Colorado, encapsulates the essence of his vision and purity of his aim.
His civic activism has never been about himself.
Ritchie had quite a life before he settled in Colorado, serving as executive vice president of MCA Universal at one point and chief executive of Westinghouse Broadcasting. As a result, he ended up a wealthy man. And lucky for Denver that he did, too, since his generosity, beginning at DU and extending to a host of beneficiaries up to the present, is another hallmark of his activism.
Ritchie turned over the job of CEO at the arts complex in August to Janice Sinden, former chief of staff to Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, but is expected to remain in the saddle as board chairman until a successor is chosen. Whatever the date of his actual departure, however, itap not too early to express appreciation for a job well done.
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