Denver as we'll know it: top development gurus chart region's future.

• Author: Titus, Stephen
• Position: Development Gurus

Economic development is one of those business terms many people don't fully understand. Oh, sure, you can toss off a literal definition: improving the business climate and generating job opportunities for a community, city or region. But what does that really mean?

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How about building a multi-billion-dollar international airport to make your city an attractive national hub for transportation? How about revitalizing your central downtown from a crime-ridden wasteland that is barely alive during daylight hours to a 24-hour business and residential Mecca that is a showpiece of tourism, sports and nightlife? How about planning a multi-modal transportation system that costs billions of dollars in a city that could barely understand the importance of a single light-rail line?

In Denver, these seemingly mission-impossible feats are attributed to the political leaders of their time: Mayor Federico Pena, Mayor Wellington Webb, and now Mayor John Hickenlooper. But what about Tom Clark, John Huggins and Julie Bender? If you don't recognize those last three names don't feel bad, but without those three economic-development power brokers--and others who support them--it is very unlikely that Denver would be the city it is today.

Clark is executive vice president of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.; Huggins is director of the Mayor's Office of Economic Development for the City of Denver; and Bender is president and CEO of the DIA Partnership. While each of these officials now has a slightly different agenda for development in metro Denver, all are shooting at a remarkably similar target for what Denver will be in the next era of the city's history. Here are their stories.

"I'm just a god-damned do-gooder," said Tom Clark in his signature plain-spoken but dry, and consciously reverse-self-deprecating sense of humor.

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"I'm an unrequited social worker, is what I am."

He's also an insatiable storyteller and has witnessed, firsthand, Denver blossom from a cow-town-with-potential to the financial and cultural center of the Rocky Mountain West. As a scheduled 30-minute interview ran into an hour and a half, he filled in the blanks on behind-the-scenes details of successful projects he shepherded, like the original Colorado Convention Center, Denver International Airport, the Rockies baseball franchise, Coors Field, and not-so-successful ventures like the attempt to land a Boeing headquarters in Colorado.

Clark started his do-gooding days in Chicago during the mid-1970s as the Chicago regional administrator for the Department of Local Government. The job fell in his lap when the then-administrator, after three days on the job, made derogatory comments about women and African Americans within earshot of both. He was fired, and Clark took over the job. "Here I am 29 years old, I have offices in Brussels, Taipei, Sao Palo, Tokyo; I'm building five convention centers; I'm running the office of minority business; I'm running the department of tourism, the department of films and the small-business office," he said. "I'm 29 years old and I can't find my way to the restroom--and I...