Johnston gives another State of The City address for Denver business leaders

At the Colorado Convention Center in the newly-built Bluebird Ballroom, hundreds of regional business leaders met together Tuesday to hear from Denver's mayor on his yearlong progress.

The event, hosted by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, was a day after Mayor Mike Johnston's State of the City address touting his accomplishments at the Paramount Theatre on Monday.

Johnston gave business leaders a similar speech to Monday’s address — covering immigration, downtown revitalization, homelessness and affordability — with an emphasis on the economic impacts of the issues his administration is tackling.

The event invited local officials from around the region to sit at roundtables, though they were rectangular, with employees from national and local organizations such as construction firm Hensel Phelps, United Airlines, Amazon, Southwest Airlines, VF Corp. and Cherry Creek West, a new mixed-use development planned for Cherry Creek.

When it comes to the rise in immigrants coming to Denver, Johnston said he’s working to help the business community turn the “crisis into an opportunity” by reducing barriers keeping immigrants from finding jobs and helping employers find workers amidst a labor shortage.

One of the most common questions Johnston said he gets from employers revolves around how businesses can hire migrants to fill jobs that have been sitting empty.

Currently, immigrants without authorization can’t legally work in Denver.

“When they arrive to this region,” Johnston said, “all they want is a job.”

Immigrants seeking asylum in the city are eligible for the "WorkReady" program, which Denver launched in June, that offers job coaching and training in skills needed for industries with high labor shortages while immigrants wait for their authorization.

The pipeline program had 350 immigrants opt in at its inception.

The mayor also teased what’s coming to downtown Denver: the reopening of the 16th Street Mall around the same time next year and the creation of a tax increment financing district to generate $500 million for downtown developments.

He also reminded people about his efforts to move homeless encampments out of downtown and how it’s the first time in years that visitors to the convention center can walk to work without running into tent camps.

One of the biggest problems the metro Denver area faces in remaining economically competitive is affordability, Johnston said.

Many residents — from teachers to retail workers — are struggling to afford a home.

The area is at high risk of losing companies to other cities and shrinking its working and middle class because of the rising cost of living, he said, committing to work and making sure Denver doesn’t become a city only for the wealthy.

“We don’t want to be San Francisco,” Johnston said.

He emphasized his initiatives to build more affordable housing such as a ballot measure, facing a difficult path to pass through City Council, to raise the city’s sales tax 0.5% to 9.65% to fund 20,000 affordable housing units over several years.

Attendees speaking with local officials lauded the mayor’s efforts to combat homelessness and create affordable housing, but also emphasized how residents just above the low-income threshold struggle to find “attainable” housing.

Some said it’s hard to keep or attract workers because of the high cost of living.

Some attendees emphasized how construction of 16th Street Mall has made it very hard for businesses to survive. And that the Regional Transportation District’s downtown project this summer that has shut down all light rail stations except for Union Station — which officials have said is sorely needed — compounds the issues.

Johnston said in his State of the City address Monday that the reopening of the mall will be a major “catalyst” for the city.

The mayor’s next key project, Johnston said, is focusing on getting development in “The Triangle” off the ground in Elyria-Swansea, a neighborhood in one of the most-polluted ZIP codes in the country. His vision is to turn the area into an affordable housing, retail corridor with “community-ownership.”

Another big investment is in Denver International Airport. The mayor said he’s working on “ambitious plans” for the airport worth $10 billion, though he did not specify what those plans were.

The mayor did say he’s committed to helping the state’s largest economic driver add more international flights — such as the recently-added Istanbul and Dublin routes — to attract more global business to Colorado.

United Airlines Vice President of its Denver hub Jonna McGrath, who took her role at the same time as Johnston, also emphasized more investments into DIA, the airline’s largest hub, such as another United Club to new flights and technology upgrades.

“We really want to be a part of the DNA of this community,” McGrath said, representing the city's largest employer, before introducing the mayor.