30 year view: Colorado's business takes topsy-turvy ride.

• Author: Lewis, David

Colorado has seen a few ups and downs in the three decades past--oh boy, has it ever--and ColoradoBiz has been here to chronicle every last inconstant, unstable, explosive, eruptive, volcanic, vertiginous, wheeling, dealing, reeling gyration. [paragraph] Looking back at those times, and the business magazine that chronicled them, yields a paradox: Comparisons of the Colorado Business magazine of 30 years ago with[much greater than] today's ColoradoBiz are simultaneously right-on and 100 percent misleading.

How can this be? Just remember that when it comes to the Colorado economy, the more things change the more they stay the same. And vice-versa.

Let's take the OCTOBER 1973 founding issue of Colorado Business magazine, for example. The cover story: ex-astronaut Wally Schirra, on the rebound from his scalping by Denver financier, oilman, tycoon, larger-than life legend and bankrupt John King.

Schirra had worked for King and invested in his uranium and oil funds. "Schirra had some tough schooling at the hands of John M. King, now involved in bankruptcy proceedings," the article notes.

"I think I lost $3 to John for every dollar he ever paid me," Schirra says, "but I learned a lot from him--mostly knowing what not to do." If you had jumped on the King Resources IPO in the '60s and held on long enough, you would have seen your investment swell to $127 a share in a short time, fetching at least a $100 paper profit. Then, all of a sudden your investment would have been worthless.

King "owed me so much money that when I left I took the office furniture with me," Schirra notes. At least he came away with an impressive carved-oak office suite.

Just a year later, Colorado Business ran an ad trumpeting: "Real Estate Auction of the World Famous King Mountain Club, Granby, Colorado, USA--The Most Expansive and Desirable Property in the World--With Comparable Privacy and Facilities." (King Mountain Ranch, designed by King as a world-class conference center, today remains a top tourist draw.)

And so it went in Colorado Business in those days, which, come to think of it, is a lot like the shenanigans the state has been exposed to lately, in the post-Y2K, bubble-economy recession.

Remember, too, please that the 1970s was a decade wracked by, in no particular order, two Arab oil embargoes, Watergate, Spiro Agnew, disco, the Vietnam War, hostages in Iran, and soaring inflation rates. (The prime lending rate reached 12.7 percent in 1979; it kept rising to 18.9 percent by 1982.)

The 1970s was the decade when the ugly term "stagflation" was invented, when President Ford exhorted us to Whip Inflation Now, President Nixon waved goodbye and President Carter donned a cardigan and explained to the nation that energy conservation was the "moral equivalent of war."

"The average businessman is now paying higher interest rates than ever before, but even so money is getting harder and harder to get," a Federal Reserve Bank official told Colorado Business readers back in '73.

In this gloomy macroeconomic atmosphere, Colorado was a shining light. Colorado Business in 1973 was poised to bulk up mightily in the next decade. Coming off a prolonged oil and natural resources slump, Colorado's economy took to the Arab Oil Embargo (October 1973 to March 1974) like a duck to water. "The ground started to swell in 1973, when 37,900 new jobs appeared in Colorado, mostly in government, manufacturing, and retail and wholesale trade sectors," Colorado Business noted in its October 1983 anniversary issue. Permit one stat to back that up: from 1973 through 1979, aggregate Colorado income more than doubled, from $13.25 billion to $23.63 billion.

The prosperous decade that ensued, which went bust in the mid-1980s, laid the foundation for the mid-90s boom, which went bust in the early 2000s.

So some aspects of the state's sometimes-comical, sometimes tragic boom-and-bust business climate seem terribly up-to-date.

But an awful lot about business in Colorado has changed forever since yesteryear.

For instance, there's this statement by 1973 columnist Chet Huntley, of Huntley-Brinkley fame. (For those of you in the 18-34 demographic, NBC co-anchors Chet Huntley and David Brinkley once were the chief rivals of Walter Cronkite, the olden days' Dan Rather.) "What I love about (the Rockies) is the openness," Huntley wrote. "No man needs a contract. You do business on the shake of a hand, and a man's word is his bond." The sentiment was true enough then, but nowadays as hoary as a whalebone corset or a no-damages lawsuit.

The first publisher of Colorado Business was MERRILL HASTINGS; in his spare time Hastings and Bill Lucas, Rocky Mountain Regional Forest Director, conceived the Colorado Trail.

The magazine's first editor was Mort Margolin, today memorialized as the namesake of the state's most prestigious business journalism award, the University of Denver's Morton Margolin Prize for Distinguished Business Reporting.

A brilliant man, he too was a captive of his time. Margolin wrote: "How our lifestyle is being affected by the commerical (sic) development of natural resources has become a foremost question.... The price of lumber is soaring while opposition mounts against increased cutting of our National Forests. The power failures occur just when further hydro-electric development is being curtailed."

Does anyone remember the last time Colorado Business was consumed by the lumber question?

Just a year after the launch of Colorado Business magazine, Chet Huntley died and University of Denver Chancellor Dr. Maurice Mitchell took over his slot with a somewhat prescient inaugural April 1974 column on recycling.

Natural resources persisted as a concern of the magazine. Then there was transportation, and oil, and the whole ball of wax:

"The fury over jet fuel has substantially evaporated.... Even before last month's lifting of the Arab oil embargo ... airlines were looking forward to a busy summer season."

Colorado Business introduced another celebrity columnist, Bud Palmer, famed sports announcer and pioneer of the jump shot. Palmer noted that entertainment media and a natural-resources crisis were not incompatible: "If everybody streaks, America will not have to depend upon Arab oil. In fact we'll have such a surplus of our own fuel that the prices of gasoline will drop quicker than a streaker's pants."

A Headline to Remember: "Vail: Valley of the Dollars."

1975's May/June issue tallied the Second Annual Top 400 Companies list, a Colorado Business tradition that persists to the present. The top five: Mountain States Telephone, Johns-Manville, Gates Rubber Co., Skaggs Cos., CF&I Steel.

That year's November/December issue pointed south--the main direction Denver-area growth has taken to this day. Cover Story: "Denver Technological Center: Reflection of the Future."

The magazine came down squarely on the side of the development, calling chief DTC developer GEORGE M. WALLACE its "Guiding Genius." "The trouble with the cities is the blight of private ownership and zoning," said Wallace. "We want to show what planning can do."

Even with 30 years' worth of hindsight, it's clear Wallace had some pretty good ideas. Among them was a "30-acre Computer Park, serviced by two independent Public Service Co. sources and automatic switching equipment ... designed to guarantee a steady flow of reliable power." Clients slated for the Computer Park included the cream of corporate America--United Airlines, Diner's Club, MidContinent Computer Services and United Banks Service Co. Wallace also planned a Financial Plaza, Restaurant Park, Doctors Park, and a Community Shopping Center

Colorado Business's June 1977 issue brought a new publisher, Robert Titsch, new editors, a new look and a sort-of new name: Colorado/ Business. The themes were much the same, however. A Federal Reserve Board "dog and pony show" yielded this: "One presentation in particular caught our interest. Dr. Marvin Duncan ... suggested we will experience 'substantial change toward normal rainfall levels in the near term' and that, he said, will 'keep cows and calves on the range.' We all know, of course, what that will mean to beef prices."

Columnists now included BRIAN LAMB, today of C-SPAN renown. Lamb quotes Tim Wirth on his seminars for select constituents in Washington, D.C.: "On the surface it seemed to be darned good citizen government. ... But some cynics ... feel Wirth has cleverly hoodwinked several of his political adversaries. For the doubters the evidence is there."

Later, Wirth became a U.S. Senator. Now, Wirth has a really cool job, overseeing the $1 billion that Ted Turner gave the United Nations.

The new Colorado/Business crew also showed a new sensitivity to people issues. Managing editor Ann Feeney wrote "Drying Out On Company Time." "Everyone has problems. Usually people solve their own. Recent trends indicate, however, that companies are using strong pressure to move employees into self-help, counseling programs."

In the news in those days was the new Boulder Mall and Aspen's Mill Street promenade, celebrated in a cover story called "What's Happening on Main Street."

"If Rocky Flats blew up, the (Boulder) mall would still be here," the article reckoned. Meanwhile, Aspen City Manager Mick Mahoney noted, "The mall is part of an attitude change.... The tide of public opinion has turned against uncontrolled growth.... We didn't want to turn into another Coney Island or Estes Park." Ouch.

1977 also began a Colorado Business tradition of celebrating women in business, "There are thousands of outstanding women in Colorado. On these pages Colorado/Business presents brief glimpses of seven...." One was Meg Hansson, founder of Gerico, now Gerry Baby Products and a division of the Ohio-based Evenflo Co. "Hansson remembers her early days when she wasn't allowed into men-only dining rooms with her New York bankers. Did she find that galling? 'No,' she says, 'I just thought of it as another challenge.'"...