Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper will join forces to try to persuade Silicon Valley companies to expand their operations in Colorado…. How did they do??

Colorado’s political wonder twins invade California this week.

Between calls on executives at Sun Microsystems, PeopleSoft and Lockheed Martin, the second-term governor and the newly elected mayor are forging an unorthodox political bond in the crucible of a rough economy.

By Mark P. Couch, Denver Post Staff Writer

"This sends a great message that they are getting together on the same page," said Rex Wiederspahn, president of Quality Electric and chairman of the DIA Business Partnership.

Owens and former Mayor Wellington Webb didn’t even read from the same book, political observers agree.

Pushed by an ailing economy and a lack of political rivalry, Owens and Hickenlooper are natural allies. After their first meeting, they agreed to the whirlwind two- day tour of Silicon Valley companies.

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Owens, a favorite son of the Republicans with presidential ambitions, and Webb, a forceful presence in Democratic circles, played on the national political stage, clashed over major policies and dueled for the spotlight.

The Hickenlooper threat doesn’t exist.

Hickenlooper, a Democrat, ran as an outsider – a fresh-faced businessman with practical ideas.

Although Hickenlooper achieved elected office on his first try, he hasn’t been in office long enough to turn his attention to higher political ground.

His hands are full attempting to rescue a withering city budget from a staggering economy.

For Owens, the trip presents an opportunity to meet with some potential bankrollers of big-time Republican candidates while asking California companies to consider expanding operations in Colorado.

The Metro Denver Network, an arm of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, organized the trip, which will ferry about 20 executives – mostly economic-development professionals – along with the politicians and their staffers.

Hickenlooper’s traveling companions will be transition director John Huggins and spokeswoman Lindy Eichenbaum Lent.

With Owens will be Bob Lee, director of the state’s economic development office; John Hansen, secretary of technology; and Rick O’Donnell, director of the governor’s office of policy.

Others on the trip include Jeff Potter, chief executive of Frontier Airlines; Tom Washing, a partner with Sequel Venture Partners in Boulder; Srikant Vasan, president of Store Preform Technologies; Jim Linfield, partner at Cooley Godward; and Chris Christoffersen, partner at Morgenthaler Ventures.

The trip includes academic administrators Jay Gershen, executive vice chancellor of the University of Colorado’s Health Sciences Center, and Sueann Ambron, dean of the business school at University of Colorado at Denver.

Tom Clark, head of the Metro Denver Network, called the mission a "platinum trip in terms of getting to see people."

The group will depart at 6 a.m. Tuesday for San Jose. The first stop is a two-hour panel session with venture capitalists who invest money in promising startup companies. That panel will be hosted by Cooley Godward, a venture-capital firm that has an office in Broomfield.

Then, the delegation will break up to call on several companies.

Clark declined to name the companies, but he said the delegation would visit executives at businesses that already have a presence in metro Denver.

"We’re going to talk to major Colorado employers that have Silicon Valley addresses," Clark said.

He acknowledged that computer network company Sun Microsystems, which has offices along the U.S. 36 corridor, and PeopleSoft, which recently acquired Denver- based software maker J.D. Edwards, are likely stops during the two days.

Owens and Hickenlooper will call on high-level executives, while other Coloradans will meet with lower-ranking workers.

Such visits can pay off, said Julie Bender, president of the DIA Business Partnership, a group that promotes northeast Denver and the area around the airport.

"There’s no substitute for personal contact," Bender said.

In recent years, Bender’s efforts helped persuade California-based real estate developers such as Catellus and Majestic to construct big warehouses near Interstate 70.

A trip that included a visit to the regional office of Starbucks in San Francisco called attention to the redevelopment of the former Stapleton airport, which is becoming a mix of houses and stores, said Bender, who is part of this week’s delegation.

On Tuesday afternoon, the group will host a reception for other California business executives and for officials in the consulate offices of foreign governments.

On Wednesday, the Coloradans will meet with the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, which represents 180 of the best-known companies in Silicon Valley.

At that private meeting on a ranch in Palo Alto, the delegation plans to discuss homeland security, technology transfer and partnerships between public schools and private companies.

"Needless to say, it was not hard to get seven CEOs into that room," Clark said, referring to the substantive discussions planned.

Then, the group will meet with other companies and stop by Lockheed Martin’s offices in Sunnyvale.

The focus of the trip is to meet with companies that already have Colorado operations. But Clark said he has had calls from California companies that do not have offices here.

The Colorado delegation is not the only Western state appealing to California companies. In recent months, Texas, Nevada and Idaho have also targeted companies in the Golden State because of its cloudy economy and murky political scene.

Opponents of California Gov. Gray Davis recently collected enough signatures for a recall vote. Davis and the state legislature have been struggling with a $38 billion deficit.

TRIP ITINERARY

Tuesday: Flight to San Jose; meetings with venture capitalists, business executives, foreign consulate officials and representatives of several

Silicon Valley firms with connections to Colorado

Wednesday: Meetings with Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group and other business leaders, including those with Lockheed Martin

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~1550418,00.html

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Silicon Valley cool to Colo. jobs mission
Owens, Hickenlooper tout state but find it’s a hard sell

By Mark P. Couch, Denver Post Staff Writer
8/7/03

SAN JOSE, Calif – Behind the smiles and glad-handing accompanying dozens of visits to Silicon Valley companies, Colorado’s leaders found a grim reality: Times are tough all over.

Even as they welcomed pitches by Gov. Bill Owens and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, top executives at technology companies said this week that they are wary about growth prospects anywhere.

A real estate expert for Oracle Corp. said he didn’t know what would happen to the J.D. Edwards campus in south Denver if Oracle is successful in its bid for PeopleSoft Inc., a company that recently purchased control of J.D. Edwards & Co.

Venture capitalists, who were the masters of the universe during the 1990s tech boom, have fewer deals to tout. Vacant storefronts line the streets of downtown San Jose. Even the corporate titans of two years ago face harder times.

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Owens bestowed a gold medallion Wednesday on Bill Coleman, founder of software company BEA Systems, in honor of his $250 million donation to the University of Colorado at Boulder, the largest gift to a public university.

The medallion allows Coleman to ski free anywhere in Colorado next season. But the stock in Coleman’s company – shares of which were to be gifted to CU over a five-year period – still struggles.

When Coleman and his wife, Claudia, announced the donation in January 2001, BEA shares were trading at about $63 each. On Wednesday, BEA stock closed at $12.89.

In San Jose, the bubble has popped, and this week the Colorado delegation heard the echoes.

"It’s going to be a tough sell," said Robert Morrison, a 55-year-old retired United Airlines mechanic who witnessed the Colorado entourage’s arrival on Tuesday.

"Housing isn’t any cheaper there, and the air is worse in the winter," said the Sunnyvale, Calif., resident whose daughter is starting the first year of a doctoral program at the University of Denver.

San Jose and the surrounding area lost 132,690 jobs between June 2000 and June 2003, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearby San Francisco lost 74,793 jobs during the same period.

More than 20 Coloradans – economic-development professionals, educators, high-tech executives and politicians – are racing across the endless freeways of northern California and roaming through corporate suites of countless offices in search of an elusive prize: job growth.

The goal of the trip is to persuade companies with significant operations in Colorado to expand, said Tom Clark, head of the Metro Denver Network, a regional group that touts the area.

The crew divided into teams and visited executives from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, PeopleSoft, AT&T, LSI Logic, Mitem Corp., McKesson Corp., Jeppesen, Lockheed Martin and dozens of other companies.

Owens and Hickenlooper met with senior-level executives at some of the companies. All of the meetings were private, and none yielded announcements of new job growth for Colorado.

Owens cautioned that the process takes time and that companies do not create jobs based on a single visit. Instead, the delegation hopes to spur those executives to think about Colorado when the time comes for their companies to grow.

"We want people to remember us," said Owens, who touted the state’s low tax rate and well-educated workforce to the executives he met. "We want them to say, ‘Put Colorado on the list’ when they are ready to grow."

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~1555833,00.html