1. Fort Carson's payroll, because it cannot expand at Pinon Canyon, might eventually be greatly scaled back or even end as the post is closed.

2. After Iraq and Afghanistan, and a cooling of the tensions with Russia, NORAD and the whole high-tech local military scene may not expand - in expenditures, facilities or personnel.

In short, the flow of Defense Dollars into El Paso County may well stagnate or even decline during the next 10 years.

What will or can our local economy be based on then?

THE GENERAL ECONOMIC SCENE

I have always contended that metro Colorado Springs and El Paso County has, from 1941 on, become too dependent on the U.S. military presence and payrolls. So long as a full division is at Fort Carson, with 25,000 soldiers, that payroll is nearly$1 billion. Something likeone out of everyfive jobs comes from defense dollars. Or to be crude about it, one could observe that El Paso County, without defense dollars, doesn't know how to make a buck on its own. It's not a manufacturing center, an agricultural center, transportation center or educational center. There is no basic, underlying economy. In short, Colorado Springs really has no reason to exist.

So let's explore the matter.

Colorado has a basic structural problem.

Because Colorado Springs is not a big enough city, like Denver or Seattle, or L.A., it cannot attract the main headquarters and core employment facility of any large national or international corporations. And when those large corporations whose base is in big cities, responding a la "Future Shock" - in the throes of the rate of accelerating change that affects almost all business sectors today, and when they are forced to downsize or sweepingly reorganize, the first thing they do is lop off the outlying "branches." Colorado Springs has always had only "branches" of big corporations. And just top "managers" locally - not "owners." Colorado Springs has no Bill Gates.

So when big companies change, smaller plants disappear or are relocated.

In the '60s through the '90s in Colorado Springs I watched IBM come and go, Digital Equipment (DEC) come and go, Hewlett Packard come and go, MCI come and disappear, and right now I am watching Intel who came, go. Dumping 800 jobs on its way out.


But the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce persists in trying to land only "the Big fish" - a large company - as a primary employer, expecting that its effects will trickle down to support many small local businesses, and thus the general economy. It hasn't worked that well for Colorado Springs during the past 75 years. With the turnover of the biggest companies, locally and nationally, with the time gaps between the coming and going of the change of the biggest local fishes, there appears to be no lasting fundamental economic effect or trend. Colorado Springs is perpetually economically insecure. Local job seekers know that better than anyone else.

As a first attempt to get out of the rut , that is why, 30 years ago when I undertook to help revitalize the run-down "Old Town" business district on West Colorado Avenue, I went out of my way to attract, capitalize and support many small businesses - locally owned or created. Lots of small fish - instead of a few big ones - to fill up the 50 empty store fronts out of 100 that was the face of declining "Old Town" in 1975. I glued it together - gave it economic coherence - on the architectural design and marketing appeal of the "history" of the original Colorado City and the west side. Not on the transience and dullness of 7-Eleven shopping centers. (I also used one of the first personal computers - Radio Shack TRS80, Visicalc spread sheet, and an acoustic modem to keep track of its diversity.)

That worked pretty well. It's called "Old Colorado City" now. And there are 1,000 people working in more than 100 separate small businesses, in 92 buildings. Not one of which is a company with a headquarters out of the state of Colorado. Most all are "owner-occupants." That is a DIFFERENT model of local business and employment. Up to a point, that has worked.

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVE LOCAL ECONOMIC ENGINES?

There are several.

Tourism is one. However much tourism, based on the "draw" of Pikes Peak, the mountains or even the "draw" of the Air Force Academy can help, it cannot be the base economy of growing El Paso County. It is too seasonal, and subject to the whims of the general national economy, on recessions, on the price of gas. Boom or bust economics.

A spinoff of tourism is the year-round convention business. But Colorado Springs has managed to shoot itself in the foot repeatedly in not getting the voters to support a big, really big, downtown Convention Center. And the remotely owned (Oklahoma) Broadmoor hotel has not only built the biggest one in the area, but alsohas spent money blocking Colorado Springs from having one. People go to The Broadmoor from the airport, but the dollars do not go downtown.

This is not a 'Convention City'

One interesting alternative was started in part by a local longtime businessman who was a "born-again" Christian. He understood that the money spent building and maintaining big national or international religious organizations was as good as anyone else's for the economy. And the conservative local political culture was generally supportive. So he stimulated the attractiveness of Colorado Springs to out-of-state organizations such as Focus on the Family, Compassion International, to go along with the Navigators - Glenn Eyrie. Its not clear how far that can go - as the number of large institutions that will relocate here are limited. Colorado Springs is not Rome and the economy of the Vatican.

"Just High-Tech" companies have not made Colorado Springs the "Silicon Mountain" that was once hoped. And many such firms are defense-related - as far as that goes and will go in the future. The city does not, unlike areas of California, have enough technologically advanced universities - such as Stanford and the University of California. Only UCCS, which, while it has developed somewhat to provide continuing technical education to engineers who work in the higher tech, it has a long way to go before the area gets a reputation for being "the place" to go, not just to find technical work but to develop in one's advanced skills for a long career. Most engineers who grow up here, get educated and leave the area. There is not the kind of "technological entrepeneurial" culture here that builds new businesses.

A "Retirement Mecca" has some potential - already a lot of fully retired, military and otherwise, seniors live here. And have independent incomes - which gives a degree of stability to the general economic scene. But it's not clear that the town wants to try and represent itself as another "Truth or Consequences" or sun-baked Phoenix, Ariz. Interestingly, however, there are a growing number - 35 at my last counting - of "Life Care Centers" supporting the aged but wealthy locals. The healthful climate and laid-back lifestyle is attractive. But it's not clear that the the local economy can grow on Geriatrics-as-Business.

Now the above are some alternative ways of thinking about the future of the Colorado Springs economy.

But there is one other I would like to expand on. I will do so in Part 2, a seperate item.