Trump, Chopra signal Colorado upswing.

• Author: Schwab, Robert

FIRST DONALD TRUMP, AND NOW DEEPAK CHOPRA!

What? Has Colorado been discovered by the nation's East and West Coasts?

Maybe for economic development purposes it has, but not, of course, for other reasons, like its natural beauty or the privacy our mountain communities afford celebrities (unless they get accused of rape or murder).

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Those attractions of the state have been marketed for years.

But on the eco-devo front, which is one of this magazine's most important interests, it's good that Hollywood and New York may finally have realized the profit potential of metro Denver.

A new report on Colorado's, and specifically metro Denver's, competitiveness among other states for recruitment of new businesses, suggests low education funding may be the "State's Achilles' heel," as the Rocky Mountain News headlined its story on the report.

Still, the report highlighted a favorable business climate for prospective corporations that might consider relocations or expansions here, and "The Donald's" and Chopra's interest in Colorado projects confirms that the two Coasts have definitely cast their development gaze inward.

Chopra reportedly is only investing the name of his Chopra Center to a spa development that is part of an expansion of the Westin Westminster hotel complex, but his involvement in the project is itself an attempt to stretch his Ayurvedic healing methods from California, where his first center was started, through Denver to New York, where he is opening a second branch of the center soon. His Denver spa is scheduled for an opening in 2007.

Last month, I mentioned Donald Trump's interest in becoming the master developer of Union Station as evidence of Colorado's recovering economy. I listened to Trump speak outside Fort Collins a few days after finishing that column, and learned then that his plans for metro Denver go beyond Union Station and involve another major project that to the date of this writing still has not been disclosed.

But Trump's double-down economic...