It's time for this biweekly meeting of the Finance and Business Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the Finance and Business Committee starting now.

All right.

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to the Finance and Business Committee.

Today is Tuesday, February 24th.

My name is Serena Gonzalez Gutierrez, and I am your chair for our committee here, and I'm also council member at large.

We have just a briefing today and some items on consent.

I'm gonna go around and do introductions of council members first, and then we'll go into the briefing that we have scheduled.

And just making sure we don't think we have anybody virtually.

Nope.

Alright, so we'll start uh in-house here, and I will start to my right.

Chris Heinz, perfect time.

Good morning, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

Good morning.

Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

Good morning, Darrell Watson, flying district nine.

Fantastic.

All right, we have some folks here from Department of Finance to talk to us about the convention center certificates of participation, updates.

Um, this is not an action item.

We uh took action some months ago, um, but there are some updates um to this plan and want to make sure that we are, you know, for the sake of transparency, making sure that this information is being presented uh as this continues to work its way through the process.

So I'm gonna turn it over um to I don't know, Jackson or who, but somebody uh one of you guys, and and please feel free to introduce all three of yourselves.

Sure, I'll take it on Ross Coon and Department of Finance.

Would you like to go over the updates or we'll go over the entire presentation?

Um why don't we do a brief overview of the presentation and then do the updates?

But if you all three want to make sure you introduce yourselves and then go from there.

Um Jackson Brockway, Capital Planning and Budget Manager, Department of Finance.

And I'm Travis Bogan, the director of the special projects and initiatives division with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.

So, thank you.

Good morning, Council.

Um, today we'll be talking about the series 2026 certificates of participation for the Colorado Convention Center Fire Alarm Project.

Um, there has been no material changes to this transaction since it was presented to council back in July.

But again, want to give an update on the delay, why is why the reason for the delay in the construction work to date?

The agenda for today uh is gonna be you know, go over the requested city council action, project background, financing terms, and any questions along the way, and we're at the end.

So uh BR 25-0935, uh is to authorize the city to enter a lease purchase uh where rents are based on the trust execution and delivery of the series 2026 certificates of participation and the principal amount not to exceed 108 million dollars for the purpose of funding capital costs for the replacement of the existing Colorado Fire Alarm System, reimbursing the city for uh certain preliminary expenditures and associated costs of uh of issuance.

So, for deputy today is really just to go over the the reason why it delayed.

We came back in July.

Um it really came down to the timing of the offering document and the 2026 budget.

So as we were progressing through the bond documents, um we were backing up to that 2026 budget release, and we felt it was really important to get that uh to include that 2026 budget information into the offering document uh so that the city was providing the most recent financial update and being uh uh fully transparent to radio industry's investors.

Uh we also wanted to align with the GO transaction that included the 2026 budget.

So we didn't want to go out with the COP transaction, not include 2026 budget information, have the budget information come out, and then GO comes out, and with that included the budget information.

Want to align all three of those things.

Um, so you know, we discussed the budget 2026 budget at length during the GL ratings calls.

Uh those discussions were well well received.

The city received uh triple A ratings for the GO, reaffirmed the A rating for the COPs, and Fitch upgraded the uh to excise tax bonds from double A minus to double A.

So we believe that delaying the transaction, including that 2026 budget and having those rating discussions is gonna have a positive impact when we sell these bonds.

I'll pass it over to Jackson to go over the project background.

Great.

Thanks, Ross.

And yeah, before we get into the the in the weeds details of the project itself, just wanted to give a quick uh overview of the convention center as a whole.

Obviously, this is a uh central location in in downtown Denver.

Um really an essential asset of the city from an economic development perspective.

Um, this center, through all of its various activities, generates more than $500 million dollars in annual economic impact.

Um, and if you stretch that over into 2034, that total impact is just over three billion uh dollars when you look at all of that um generated activity down there.

So when we look at the Colorado Convention Center itself, it's a it's a massive building.

It's 2.2 million square feet, um, and uh it's got about 584,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space, as well as a 670 space parking garage.

Somewhat of the larger assets within our facilities portfolio.

Looking as well, a key piece of this project is uh the convention center expansion.

Um so this was um finalized and opened early in 2024.

Um it's about a 250,000 square foot addition with multi-function ballroom, pre-function space, uh, lobby improvements, and then um improved interior and exterior wayfinding.