Stop Growing?

• Author: SCHWAB, ROBERT
• Position: Colorado - economic aspects - Brief Article

COLORADANS MAY HAVE THEIR OWN DESIGNS ON THE LANDSCAPE

To grow or not to grow, to my mind, is not much different from Shakespeare's classic: To be or not to be. Each proposition contains its alternative, and both suggest an end.

Hello, I'm your new editor.

David Lewis joined the Internet magazine world, and I've just come from the world of newspapers. Many of you may know me from a column on small businesses that I wrote each week for four years at The Denver Post. I actually spent 12 years at the Post, six of them as deputy business editor, two as night city editor and the last four as a writer and columnist.

I hope you'll get to know me better through this monthly column and through the rest of the magazine. I will have had a lot to do with what you read.

In the way of introduction: I'm a large man, a liberal Democrat who always has been comfortable surrounded by conservatives, perhaps because I believe they'll save me from excess. Like our states governor, I have spent time in Texas, and once told a few office holders there the state's Democrats were so conservative they ought to just switch to the Republican Party. They did.

During 30 years working for newspapers, I've covered presidents and police, cowboys and courts, shootings and showdowns. But in all that time, I most enjoyed writing about owners of Colorado small businesses, and, on the editing side, putting together the daily package of stories for readers of the Post's business section.

That's probably why I'm here. It's a way for me to grow -- which brings me back to my topic. I remember when I first started my newspaper career in Austin, having come from a news service in downtown Chicago, I asked my colleagues what was planned for all the empty hills that were a short distance out of town on the way to San Antonio.

Nothing, they said. But they were wrong.

Like Interstate 25 in Colorado, like the bare hills of Highlands Ranch, like the fields around DIA, someone had designs on the land. Reading Mary George's piece in this month's issue about the debate over the Responsible Growth Initative, reminded me of those Texas hills, and of Colorado when I arrived here just 12 years ago. Lower Downtown was a wasteland then, and the 16th Street Mall was empty at 6 p.m. when I was looking for a restaurant...