Art, tax politics and a sales: galleries depend on community's passion.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: Denver, Colorado

THE LIGHTS WERE BRIGHT ON THE SEVEN MAYORAL CANDIDATES' FACES, and extra chairs brought into the theater to accommodate an overflow art-and-politics crowd brought the audience up very close.

An Zavaras hunched over the end of one candidate table, next to Penfield Tate, who looked relaxed and ready Beside Tate, Elizabeth Schlosser faced a stack of notes, and beside her Phil Perington looked the role of the straight-backed businessman.

Across from them, at a second table, Susan Casey was calm but serious, while a sardonic grin played at John Hickenlooper's lips. Don Mares sat beside Hickenlooper, stolid and prepared. Media personalities Patty Calhoun and Gregg Moss stood at the podium. After the TV cameras were finally ready, Calhoun launched the first questions.

No one among the 400 people packed into the Jones Theatre's seats and aisles at the Denver Performing Arts Complex on Jan. 21 actually expected any of the candidates for mayor to shock them by declaring art as dead as the Colorado economy.

But many people came to discover differences among the seven potential mayors: grades of passion for the arts that might measure up or slip away under the pressures of governing and tight budgets.

Metropolitan Denver's unique Scientific and Cultural Facilities District tax must be re-authorized by voters before it sunsets in 2006, and many people wanted to know how strongly the next mayor of Denver, whoever it may be after the May election, will fight to extend the life of the sales-tax district.

In 2001, the tax -- one penny on every $10 purchase in the seven counties where the tax is collected -- provided $37 million to more than 300 scientific, cultural and artistic organizations and institutions within the metro area.

A study done for the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts pegs the annual economic impact of those organizations at $1 billion in sales, salaries, construction and taxes paid by the groups.

On the strength of the SCFD tax -- first approved by metro-area voters in 1988 -- the Denver area has gained a national reputation for developing art and culture. It's a reputation reinforced by Denver voters' approval of a new; $42 million wing for the Denver Art Museum, to be completed in 2005.

Surprisingly, the tax and the reputation the city has gained from it may also have given rise to a resurgence of art galleries in Denver, despite the tough economics that such businesses face -- especially in Denver where the commerce of art and...