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Useful Discussions
Most opposition to the University of Colorado purchase of the Flatiron property rests on three arguments: first the secrecy with which the buy was negotiated; second, that the price is suspiciously high; and third, that development of the site would constitute a trespass on open space and the whole comprehensive planning process.
The first two objections are insupportable, based as they are on common misunderstandings about real estate dealings.
The third objection also turns out to have little basis in fact or fairness -- to my surprise and chagrin, as I had heartily supported the argument.
Secrecy in business or government affairs is often assumed to provide convenient cover for crooked dealings. While secrecy may be misused, it is critical to any negotiation where competitors could benefit from knowledge. To accuse CU of slippery conduct merely because it kept quiet is especially inappropriate in this case: the most able and disciplined practitioner of secrecy in Boulder County land deals has for decades been the City Open Space Department.
Most people have a hard time with valuation of real estate. There is no absolute "value" to any real estate: value flows from feasible and allowable use. Farmland may be worth $500 per acre; if rezoned for intensive commercial use, the same ground may be worth $100 per square foot. Once in a while in the mountains of Boulder County, a family buys a spectacular parcel, intending to build, only to find they have acquired a very expensive picnic site.
We must take the regents at their word that they do not know the precise use to which the Flatirons parcel will be put, just as no one present in 1955 at the purchase of what is now the Research Park could have predicted that outcome. (However, it would help if Mr. Dietze would avoid his best, Henry Kissinger tones while taking questions. "My vay, or ze autobahn!" is good lawyering, but lousy regency.)
CU may appear to some to overpay today, but in the likely outcome thirty years from now, the 308 acres will present a nearly priceless opportunity.
The surprise lies in the formation of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan.
A few weeks ago, Chancellor Park responded to a trespass accusation by saying that during the Comp Plan preparation, no one had contacted CU to ask its future needs for land.
How could this be? The Comp Plan discussions began in the '60's -- in all this time, nobody asked the County's largest employer and non-municipal landowner?
Impossible. CU had to have been asked. So I called to confirm the Chancellor's error: Al Bartlett, Linda Jourgenson, Janet Roberts, David Grimm, Ruth Correll, Bob WhiteÉ. No need to recite titles and dates: these people were there.
While I cannot confirm that no one contacted CU about its expansion needs, I can confirm that nobody remembers any such contact. Also, several of these people said to remind everyone that "open space" in the Comp Plans was only a preliminary identification of parcels for potential purchase by the City, and not a zoning category.
Of course, the Comp Plans were not developed in secret, and CU could have expressed its needs. However, there is always a greater burden on the planner to communicate and discover than on the plannee. The Boulder Campus neither can nor should grow indefinitely, but neither should the City arbitrarily attempt to set Campus limits.
Once again, a surprise from the outside world has disturbed our pre-packaged, Lilliputian notion of the universe. There were 53,000 babies born in Colorado last year, and a lot of them are going to want to attend the leading state university. That school has an obligation to them.
So do we.
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