Optimistically speaking.

• Author: SCHWAB, ROBERT

KEEP THE FAITH EVEN IF THE BUBBLE BURSTS

Take a look inside our magazine this month and you'll find a collection of stories that emanate from a boom economy.

Offbeat shopping, Greeley aggressively persuading ConAgra Meat Companies to consolidate its headquarters in that town's new business park, even plans for a south metro-Denver development that could rival the size of downtown.

Those stories are benchmarks to Colorado's business optimism. They speak to the state's confidence in its prospects during the longest economic expansion this nation has ever experienced.

But is the ride over?

On page 81, Jeff Rundles takes a swipe at that question from the perspective of someone who has been around long enough to remember Colorado's business climate in the late 1980s.

Jeff and I must think alike.

Last month's violence in the Middle East and the bombing of the USS Cole, during a time of already rising oil prices, were enough to throw a scare into anyone planning for Colorado's boom to keep on pumping.

Yet confidence goes beyond the ups and downs of an economy.

In our "Who Owns Colorado?" feature this month, the location of an end-of-the line station on the light-rail line along Interstate 25 is discussed. Ground breaking isn't scheduled until 2007.

Yet if a downturn is in our future, will the station be completed?

It should be.

That's what confidence is, faith in the future.

It tends to have beneficial effects.

Carl A. Worthington, a longtime Denver and Boulder architect, designed commuter-train stations along the highway more than 20 years ago when he helped plan the Denver Tech Center.

Worthington argued then, as he does now that "transit villages" channel commercial and residential development onto...