Rivals for front range growth: springs, Fort Collins cast different pro-business lures.

A young woman in a denim skirt and short-sleeved blouse is standing on a corner on the edge of "Old Town" Fort Collins, a violin tucked beneath her chin, her bow carving out arias from the background noise of the rush-hour traffic that swirls around her. Drivers in pickups and Volvos--an eclectic mix that reflects Fort Collins' agricultural and academic influences--glance through open windows, catch a few strains of Bach or Vivaldi, then drift away to take care of business. Inside her violin case, open on the sidewalk, coins glitter as the sun pitches shadows into the dark velvet box. Since foot traffic is light on this particular spring afternoon, the quarters, dimes and nickels are probably just seed money for another day. But her playing is vigorous, nonetheless--an investment in future receipts.

For anyone poking into the economic realities of two of Colorado's most livable, and economically aggressive cities--Fort Collins and Colorado Springs--there are abundant business parallels in this musical moment. As an economic model, the young violinist's success as a street musician is much dependent on the cultural amenities around her. The art shops, restaurants, bookstores, pubs and boutiques of Old Town draw a particular kind of consumer--young, urbane, educated--the kind of people who might find loose change in their pockets and who use it to acknowledge her musical artistry.

The coins themselves, on display in her case, are an advertisement that others already have "invested" in what she brings to the cultural ambiance here. And the music--something different, perhaps, than you might find at mid-day in Colorado Springs--reflects the cultural attitudes of a city heavily influenced by one of the state's premier research institutions, Colorado State University.

Growth and the opportunity to shape it have tossed both Colorado Springs and Fort Collins--the state's second and fifth largest cities by population--into an informal competition for designation as Colorado's "Second City," that place along the Front Range where new or relocating businesses will look first, once they've looked beyond the expanse of seven-county metropolitan Denver.

Both cities acknowledge that growth is inevitable. "There are two schools of thought on that," says Bruce Biggi, Fort Collins' new economic adviser, hired this spring to help guide the equally new Economic Viability and Sustainability Group, the city's first formal economic-development agency. "One of them is that if you build it, they will come," he said. "The other is, they are going to come anyway, so you better be prepared."

Linked through Denver by Interstate 25, the state's major north-south transportation corridor, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs nevertheless are differentiated by a variety of factors, ranging from background to cultural makeup, from political philosophy to other influences that have made each what it is today.

DIFFERENT STARTS

Colorado Springs, founded as a mining and resort community, turned to the military in the 1930s and '40s to attract economic growth. The Air Force Academy, Peterson Air Force Base, Fort Carson, Cheyenne Mountain and other military installations have helped the city grow to a 2002 population estimate of more than 373,000 and surrounding El Paso County to about a half-million people.

Fort Collins, which got its start as a frontier military encampment that now has grown to a population of 124,400, pursued water rights in its early days, an almost single-minded drive to make Larimer County and surrounding communities a thriving agricultural Mecca. Those early developers succeeded; CSU's contributions to agricultural research have served to stimulate that success.

While Colorado Springs is known for its conservative politics, Fort Collins, 132 miles to the north, is seen as more progressive, and to some even liberal. While Fort Collins touts its links to one of the nation's top research universities, Colorado Springs boasts of the achievements of its Air Force Academy graduates, Colorado College and the younger, smaller University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Fort Collins thrives on a youthful culture cultivated in part by the many students who remain there after graduation. Colorado Springs takes pride in the military retirees who also stay.

Despite those differences, the two cities are similar in that each has a significant high-tech labor pool that provides a draw for tech-centric businesses looking for ready talent. Each community also boasts a business-friendly environment, a shared objective of planners to retain a hometown feel and a community spirit, and the knowledge that each has been rated in the past as among the best places in the country to live.

TWO INSIDERS

If any two people have behind-the-scenes perspectives on the challenges facing each of their communities, it is J.J. Johnston, president of the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp. at Fort Collins, and Rocky Scott, Johnston's counterpart at the Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp. The two not only compete to drive economic opportunities into their own corrals, but they share a sense of friendly cooperation, one that has in the past caused them to make referrals when something doesn't fit for one or the other. "We are competitors, but friendly competitors," says Johnston. "If we cannot get a business into Fort Collins, our first call would be to neighboring communities, but then it would be to Colorado Springs."

Scott echoes the sentiment. "I'm not sure we do things fundamentally differently," he said. "At the end of the day our attitude is, in order of priority: Would love to have them (a prospective relocating company) here, but if for some reason after evaluating options, a company would prefer to be in Pueblo or Fort Collins, we help them as much as we can."

Scott acknowledges that the presence of a major research university gives Fort Collins a leg up in attracting certain kinds of business, but he also notes that CU at Colorado Springs is bringing in bio-tech work that helps diversify the Springs economy into some of the areas that rival Fort Collins' and CSU's agriculture and bio-tech expertise. Karen Newell, a research scientist and immunologist at the UCCS, raised more than $800,000 for the school's Institute for Bioenergetics, to aid her research into how the human immune system can be stimulated to kill cancer cells. Newell was considered instrumental in helping recruit HemoGenix, a drug testing company, to Colorado Springs, and she is becoming involved in retraining out-of-work technologists for the biosciences. "One thing they ask me is if they do this retraining, will they get a job on the other end," she said. "I wish I could tell them they would all get jobs, but we have tried to do the next best thing, which is the transfer of knowledge, and the creation of intellectual property."

Scott sees an increase in manufacturing jobs as a priority for Colorado Springs. "We've lost a lot of manufacturing jobs, and we would like to replace them," he said. "But another of our goals is to diversify, and we are working toward that" through homeland-defense business initiatives spawned by the Springs' close relationships to the military, and the Colorado Springs Airport, which is second to Denver International Airport for Front Range air service, he said.

HOW IT PLAYS

Dr. Carlos Araujo, a former professor whose research in chip technology was commercialized to form Symetrix Corp. in Colorado Springs, describes the community as "business friendly," yet one which values the environment and quality of life. It is that climate, he said, that has kept him there, and helped his company grow. "Symetrix itself is a very quiet company, because everything we do is kind of secret, patent-oriented," Araujo said. "The people who buy licenses for our patents, the Panasonics of this world, don't necessarily want to see us in the papers much. But since 1993 ... we have produced (patents leading to) ... some 700 million chips, so we've been a very successful enterprise."

Araujo sees opportunities for others in the same vein, and he doesn't fear growth that inevitably comes with development. "I like what I see," Araujo said. "Some people don't like size, (but) there is a huge difference between growing big, and growing well; and in most cases, I think, Colorado Springs has been growing well."

The Colorado State University Research Foundation at Fort Collins--which has its own new campus complex on the south side of Fort Collins--has been promoting business development around Fort Collins since 1941, says Bruce Biggi. Its renewed emphasis on helping create job opportunities for the skilled labor pool of former technology workers is focused largely on bio-tech because of CSU's expertise in agricultural and other sciences. But Fort Collins' depth in technology is broader than that, Johnston says the process of taking intellectual property and commercializing it was one of the principal reasons Hewlett Packard decided to locate in Fort Collins. The computer manufacturer has been a longtime employer, and its presence has acted as a draw for other kinds of companies as well.

Bob Blythe, president of In-Situ, a company that designs and builds sophisticated water-quality testing and monitoring equipment, just relocated the firm to Fort Collins from Laramie, Wyo. "We looked at several areas in Colorado, and spent three years doing it," Blythe said. "But we kept coming back to Fort Collins because of what is offered here." Put plainly, that is the community's ability to attract and retain the kind of employees he needs, and he anticipates hiring 150 over the next five years.

"The infrastructure for supporting business in Northern Colorado is a lot stronger than where we were," he said. "Colorado State University has already welcomed us with open arms, and we've formed good relationships with the business school."

Johnston says Blythe's experience reflects the strengths of the Fort Collins business community. "We know there is a love-hate relationship with economic development," he says. "But what we love about it is that it brings in jobs, it raises percapita income, it puts people to work."