This committee meeting focused on two main agenda items: a request from Denver International Airport (DEN) to amend a group of concessions contracts, and a briefing from the Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency (CASR) on municipal energy projects, including solar, EV charging, building resilience, and thermal decarbonization. The meeting also included brief updates on airport developments and a discussion on accessibility in EV charging infrastructure.
Hey Denver, it's time for this biweekly meeting of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of Denver City Council. Join us for the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee starting now. Good afternoon. My name is Chantel M. Lewis, and I represent District 8. Welcome to the Transportation Infrastructure Committee. Today is Wednesday, September 17th, already 2025, and I am excited to chair this committee. With that, we'll do a round of introductions and start with you, Proten. I go there. Good afternoon, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4. Good afternoon, Flora Ridres, Lucky District 7. Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver District 2. Hey Denver, Chris Hines. Perfect. And we have no virtual participation. We do have an action item, a number of action items from the Denver International Airport. And I'll have you all do an introduction and then you can jump in. And Pamela Deshant, Senior Vice President of Concessions at Den. Welcome. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you for your time, everyone. Good afternoon. We are here before you today with a very distinct and unique group of concessions contracts that we will be asking to be amended. I'd like to provide you some context before we get into the details of the contracts up for amendment. Over the past few years at DEN, we've been really working hard to modernize the program, to bring in new concessionaires, more small local businesses. So a huge modernization program going on. The one thing that we had not modernized in our program had been the length of the contract terms. The terms went back to the very first day of the airport, seven years for retail, 10 years for food and beverage. So as we redeveloped the program, we realized recently that you know what? In order to keep up with today's world and today's costs, we needed to right size the contract term links, which is why in January of 2024, it was January 1st, 2024. All new contracts moving forward have new contract term lengths, which are nine years for retail and 12 years for all food and beverage. This is really important because the cost of building out at the airport, we learned, has doubled for food and beverage operators and has tripled for retailers. So it made sense to us that effective January 1st of last year moving forward, we would lengthen those terms. We did, however, have a group of concessionaires that came to us and said, thank you for the changes. This makes a lot more sense to us. We'll be able to recover all of the capital costs that we put in. But I just missed that deadline, right? And so we listened, we looked at the numbers, we looked, we heard all of the feedback, and what we did is we went back to the drawing board and looked at our entire concessions portfolio. And of all the contra the concessions contracts, we grouped them into three separate buckets. And today we're going to talk about the second group. These are people who came to us and said we're stuck in this middle earth, as coined by Mr. Washington. We're stuck in this middle earth. So although you've extended the terms, we can't get that benefit. It's just beyond our reach, just based on a hard line in the sand, a date. Furthermore, these concessionaires said to us, we were not able to enjoy the privilege of being at the at the airport some since 1995. Fast forward to today, we have that special Middle Earth group before you. And of those 28, we have a group of 14 before you today with the intention of coming back to ask for the remaining 14 to be amended. The chart before you shows a listing of the joint venture partnerships that are that are included in this group two requested action.