[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] What is up, everybody? Thank you all for joining me on the latest broadcast part of the CSG Nevercom. Of course, you host Jeff Morton. I hope everyone enjoyed my podcast with drummer extraordinaire, Steve Gordon Gorman. On the last podcast, go check that out. It's really good. Steve's one of my favorite people in the world. And I hope everyone enjoyed my conversation with Steve just about everything with sports and stuff like that. So check that out. This podcast is going to be a little interesting because this has been a subject I've been actually thinking about covering for a long time. Obviously, you know what the subject of this, if you read the title of this episode, but it is something that has gone under reported in this area. And I think my friend Andy actually was the first one way, way, way, way back when, probably 10 years ago was the first one to probably bring it up on Denver Stips. And this is a subject that needs to be talked about because it is something that it seems weird to us, even though we are annoyed by it, it seems weird to us to have it be such a factor in the people's perception of Denver. And that is the location, size, and general inconvenience of Denver International Airport. Now you're thinking you probably looked at that title and neither either you have clicked on this out of curiosity or you think I'm a moron. But this is done with 15 years of experience of talking about this within the within the NBA and how the issues associated with the airport have greatly influenced the perception of the city and NBA circles. And a lot of that has to do with decisions in Denver made to not develop closer to the airport and really has made this the airport this weird anomaly in most major cities in the United States. And it really affects the way NBA players, NBA media, and other such entities within the league think about the Denver area. I'm going to give you in Jeff classic style, I'm going to give you back history of why the airport is where it is right now and give you an idea of the kind of the mentality of Denver. So this is very specifically a Denver thing too. This goes back to its founding in the mid 1800s. And then in the second half I'm going to talk to you about the NBA and how one of the biggest complaints about it is about the city of Denver is the airport. And the airport is where it is is a factor of a lot of different different things that came together in the early 80s to them to the late 80s. There were several attempts to replace what was known as Stapleton Airport. For those of you who are too young to remember Stapleton was the main Denver airport for decades. And it was deemed by several people in the city because of Denver's location in the map of the United States. It was deemed to be inadequate. And really the land area devoted to Stapleton wasn't huge. There is an entire development on it right now. It's not called Stapleton anymore. They changed the name. I'm not there frequently enough to know. Is it Central Park now? I don't know. Anyway, the area around there wasn't big enough to contain what you would need to have Denver as a hub of many airlines. And once they moved to DIA, continental and Delta and those like that decided to hub their places in Denver, it's not that way anymore. Plus frontier airlines and whatnot. So the Stapleton basically Denver outgrew Stapleton, even though the process of getting out of Stapleton began when Denver was still in a deep recession from the oil bust of the early 1980s. So Federico Peña, who was the mayor of Denver through the 80s, he wanted desperately to get a new and much larger airport devoted for the city of Denver. Because of Denver's location, it could be a hub kind of like Atlanta. And they wanted a large enough airport to wear a hub for one of the major airlines could exist. So plans were made actually to locate the airport at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, which anyone who knows anything about the Arsenal, it's history and all that stuff. It was a munitions testing area for the army in the 40s. And there's probably several complicating factors about why the Arsenal couldn't get turned into an airport. But one of those was the neighborhoods and the neighborhoods around there, particularly in Commerce City, basically the Arsenal sits on the border of Commerce City and Denver. It's in Adams County, but it's right there. It's very close and Denver would have annexed it wholly in order to have the airport there. Neighborhoods there primarily did not want an airport and its noise around that area. Even though there's not a ton of development in that area, that was the case. And they really went to Adams County who was the controlling interest in this and prevented the city of Denver from building DIA, what became DIA, on the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. So later in the 80s, Federico Peña brokered a deal with Adams County to get an airport about 25 miles outside of the city limits of Denver on a 56 square mile patch of land. And this became the future location of Denver International Airport and this broke ground in 1989. And then DIA didn't actually open. Federico Peña was long since gone and he was transportation secretary for Bill Clinton. And he did not see as Denver mayor, this was Wellington Webb. He did not see the opening of DIA, which was famously cataclysmic and really didn't become fully operational until 1996 because of the baggage issues, baggage, automatic baggage system issues that they put into it. Well, the airport is enormous. It's the size of a small city. It is the second largest in terms of land area airport in the entire world. One of the reasons there's this way is because of the runway needed, because of the turbulence coming into Denver. You need a longer runway. This is an issue they ran into at Stapleton and this is kind of where that happened. Now, I need to backtrack a little. One of the motivations for getting DIA is kind of the fuck you attitude of Denver. Way back in the 1800s, when the Transcontinental Railroad was built, it did not come through Denver. Because it was deemed basically impossible to drill through the mountains at that time with the technology they had, they went above and they went through what is now Cheyenne Laramie and all that stuff through Wyoming, which is I-80, essentially. And the city of Denver very specifically was like screw you and built a railroad privately financed a railroad from Denver to connect to the Transcontinental Railroad solely because they were skipped. And that is something that is embedded in the culture of Denver. That's why Denver attracts so many weirdo libertarians. And there's this weird combination out here of leave me alone, but don't ignore me. And it's unique to Denver. You know, Colorado is full of the most casual people on the planet because of where we live. But there is this almost leave me alone resentment is what I've always described it with Denver. Please ignore us, but don't ignore us. And this has been part of that. And part of getting the airport was the fact that Denver needed to boost itself. And by the time you get to the mid-90s Denver had grown rapidly from the 80s. It had fully recovered from the recession caused by the oil bust and Exxon pulling out. And transformed the economy from oil and energy base to tech based. And it completely transformed the city. The city has grown by leaps and bounds over the way it was in the 80s. I believe it's almost doubled in size since the 80s. The actual city at Denver, the metro area is about 3 million people. Denver wanting to be a big league city without having the being, you know, with also being ignored is probably one of the things that is embedded in this city. And DIA being so massive other than the runway thing, which is something you didn't need to have an enormous actual terminal for DIA to have big runways. But they built one of the biggest airports in the world for a city of 3 million people. Because of its location in the United States and where people have to stop, it's easy for connecting flights into that sort of thing. Well, one of the things that they neglected to do, and this is something that is true for the city and the way these things are constructed and the way these things are presented, is they neglected to account for the mass amount of travel and inconvenience and later problems with the airport itself due to its size. And this is something that they never accounted for. And this is something that would continue to grow and fester for the rest of the 90s and through the 2000s. Denver International Airport is impressive in its size. It's impressive in its scale. But it is in the middle of nowhere. And we've all talked about this with the, for some reason, the official air temperature being kept at the airport, which bears no relation to the temperature for the rest of the city. And because it's so far out there, it's 25 miles outside of Denver. Peña had to compromise and get land way, way out in the middle of nowhere in order to build what became the signature part of Federico Peña in Colorado, is building that airport for a massive cost starting in 1989 and eventually finishing in 1995 and then continuing into 1996. DIA is one of the examples of American ingenuity, but it's also, as I'll get to in the second half of the podcast, an example of getting something built without thinking about what it would do. Now, we in Denver have all had to deal with the airport. No one likes going to the airport. I don't personally like going to the airport. I haven't been there in 10 years. More than that, I just don't need to go there. I mean, if I go travel, I drive by car, usually a rented car. I would rather spend that than go out to down Penuvolivard for a long time. And I live closer to the airport than most people in the metro area, I live in Thornton. There is, but most of the actual population in Denver is so far out that it just becomes a massive pain in the ass to get to the airport. And in the second half of the podcast, that pain in the ass translates directly to the way NBA players perceive the city of Denver. And it's this weird, weird situation that arises when you talk to people in the NBA. How much the first thing they say is how much they hate DIA. But first, I need to talk to you about Blanchard family wines, located between 18th and 19th, and Blake and Wazian. Beautiful. Lower downtown Denver, Colorado. Just a couple blocks away from course field. In the military block, they're always online at bfwcolorado.com. They got their Blake Street blend wine back. I just saw that posted on Instagram. That's really good. That's kind of a blend of Zinfandel, Cabernet and Rollo. It's a really good kind of nice combination that they really, and Blake Street blends one of the best things they produce there. And it's seasonal, it's kind of like their Pino. So get it while it lasts. Rockies are started their season. Obviously, they're not great right now as I discussed on one of the podcast last week. So maybe just go downstairs, dead downtown, despite them. Just kind of go there, head that way, and just don't even worry about that. Just go there to downtown to enjoy lower downtown in the wines at Blanchard family wines. And experience their vast selection of wines, which include whites. It includes raisins, which includes rosés. It's basically got everything you need in your favorite local wine bar. They got a location in Fort Collins, and they got a location in Golden. Of course, they got their original location in Sonoma County. Once again, they're located between 18th and 19th, and Blake and Wazie, and beautiful lower downtown in Denver, Colorado. Just a couple blocks away from Coors Field, right in the middle of the dairy block. They're always online at bfwcolorato.com. They're on Facebook and Instagram and are Blanchard family wines. When you go in or you talk to them, tell them Jeff Morton from CSU podcast sent you. See, one of the first things that I encountered when, and this was really surprising, and I never really reported on it. Our good friend Andy Feinstein did. When I first started covering the Denver Nuggets 15 years ago, one of the first things I heard is how much people hated the airport, and it came primarily from media members. Now, I am not asking you to pity media members who come in from out of town. It is, who cares, right? Who cares, I wouldn't care, and I was a member of the media. But it does feed into something that I have been talking about, and it's kind of started with that, and then it filtered into some comments that Brian Shaw made all the way back in 2014 about the Denver airport kind of being a problem, particularly when it comes to players and recruiting players via free agency. Now, if anyone has flown into DIA, the first thing you notice is you don't see anything but mountains and flat plains. You don't really see the city where the arena is. And a lot of players that I have talked to over the years about DIA and flying into Denver is they say when you fly in, it doesn't look like there's any city. It's just like in the middle of nowhere. You see all you see is mountains. And a lot of them arrive at night so that you don't see anything. And you arrive at DIA, then you load yourself into one of these buses, and it keeps going and going and going. At 45 minutes later, you're at the four seasons downtown, and it's unbelievable. Now, we talk about this sort of thing, and it's good for home court advantage for the Denver Nuggets. But it is terrible when in recruiting for a free agency. Over the years, the complaints have grown. And with DIA's issues the last several years, with efficiency, with the remodeling that they have been doing out there, and the things that they have been trying to do, the train always breaks down, go both going to the airport, and the train that goes in the airport, which you definitely need to take you to some of these terminals, is really bad. And when you talk to these players, the first thing they mention is it takes so long to get from the airport to downtown. And the second thing they mention is it doesn't look like it to anywhere. So their perception of Denver becomes this visual snapshot, particularly if they arrived during the day, this visual snapshot of nothingness. A giant airport in the middle of nowhere. And then some of that is the fault of the city of Denver and Adams County with doing relatively little development out towards the airport. There are some hotels along the way, there is obviously Gaylord Rockies, but there really isn't any sort of substantial development heading out to the airport. And largely it's because of that it's done on a strip of land that goes from connects Denver to the main city of Denver to the airport. If you look at a map of Denver, it's like the city and then there's this kind of like arm that extends out into a giant hand, which is the DIA. So they haven't done any development out there. And there really is just kind of this disconnectedness with it. If you're landing into it, you just don't see anything. And that's not only a problem for players who come into town and see Denver. You may see Denver if you're an Eastern Conference team once a year. If you're a Western Conference team a couple times a year, and there's already the altitude thing, but primarily, and it's weird, the biggest complaint I have ever heard about playing in Denver has been DIA and where DIA is located. There was a podcast recently with Ryan Winhorst and his hoop collective, and there have been several times all of them have mentioned how much they hate DIA. And like I said, I'm not asking you to pity reporters coming into Denver. Just don't do that. That's stupid. That's the definition of first world problems. But there are complaints mirror what NBA players say and NBA organizations say. And it's weird how that kind of plays into the perception of Denver. And you wouldn't think that that would be a thing. I mean, we live here and we get annoyed with DIA and we get annoyed at how far out from everything DIA is. And we don't really think about how other people come into town and have probably even more annoyance with it because of how far it is. Now think about you're coming in and you're just wanting to go to the mountains. Boy, not only do you have to drive to the mountains, but you have to drive an additional 25 miles to get even into the city of Denver. And that has got to be annoying as hell. I'll be honest with you. But more than that though, it is strange and I don't know how this can be solved. I'll be honest with you. You know, the arenas, I mean, they could, I suppose, move the arena locations. But I doubt that's going to happen. They, you know, there have been rumors of them maybe building a football stadium out there by the Arsenal. Maybe. I don't know. But who knows? Those are rumors. I mean, that would be significantly closer to the airport, but it's still at the same time. It is what it is. Denver's airport is where Denver's airport is. And there's no easy solution to solving it because there has been, I describe this at, like, where I live in Thornton is only 15 minutes away from downtown Denver. Okay. It's hop on to ice. I mean, if I was driving, I'd hop on to I-76 and to I-25 and I'm there. You know, if it's, if it's obvious, if it's rush hour, it takes longer. But, you know, if it's during the middle of the day, 15 minutes, I'm down, downtown. Think about that and think about I live in a fairly rural part of Thornton. And I'm surrounded by fields. Well, the farther you go east, it's more fields. It's more planes. And there's not a lot of development you can do in certain areas. DIA is not that close to the Platte River. And there's water access. And there's all those other factors that go into it. That DIA is just huge. And it's this thing. It's, it's an island in the middle of flat planes. And there is just not much you can do to change that. It is, it is what it is. They haven't built out towards there. They could have done significantly more building along Peña Boulevard to get out there. But how would that solve the traveling from DIA to downtown where the teams play? Same thing with football teams. Same thing with hockey teams coming in. Same thing with baseball teams. You know, it is, it is just location, location, location. And really that is nine tenths of the problem. And the other problem is it just the, what surrounds it leads it to, leads it to, leads, people already think Denver is a countdown. And when they come in, the airport does nothing to dissuade that notion. Even though there's three million people who live in Denver, you flying into the airport leads you to believe there ain't nothing here. And that is the weirdest dichotomy. Coming back to the players. I, this is one of the, and I would say by far the most consistent complaint I ever heard from players was the airport. And there was a couple players. I remember way, way, way, way, way, way. This is talking about the draft workouts of like 2014-15 right around there. Who were like, man, I didn't know there was this much city here. And I said, what do you mean? They said, well, there's just, I was Devin Booker, actually Devin Booker. He said, I didn't know there was much city here. And I said, what do you mean? He says, well, the airport's so far away. He said, we landed and it was like in the middle of this corn field. And I said, well, there's no corn out there. And then he asked Nate and I for a recommendation for a restaurant and stuff like that. But it was, it was, well, actually probably one of the best conversations I ever had in one of these draft workouts was with Devin Booker. It was great. But it was way out in the middle of nowhere. And he was like, well, I didn't know there was this much city here. Which was, which was interesting to hear. And I didn't think about it that way. And a lot of players that come in, just their perception of the city gets warped by the airport and how far away it is. And you add into that how absolutely, how at times, Devin DIA can be the biggest shit show on the planet as far as getting through and getting there and getting through security and all the steps you need to take. It is mind boggling and you wouldn't think about it. Now, like I said, I don't know how you change it. I just don't. I mean, this is, this is one of those things where it's kind of is what it is because of where it's built. Unless they move arenas and the four seasons and diets out to the airport or how long pain you boulevard, I just, I don't know what they could do. And this is going to be a common thing. And you wouldn't think, you wouldn't think about it. You would not think that the airport and its location would be a factor in the way that people look at the city of Denver. But it is. And it's only because they don't, they're not here. Once people get here, they like it. You know, that Tim Connolly used to say that all the time. He says, once we get people actually experiencing the city of Denver, they like it. But the problem is getting them there. And that was Tim's, that was one of Tim's big things. It's like getting them to actually spend the time here. It was, it was been difficult. The person who liked Denver the most was Dorel Arthur. He, I think he still lives out here. Al Harrington really liked Denver. You know, there's people who do, but they actually have to spend time in the city. And that is really hard. Because from the snapshot you see as an NBA player, you're landing in the middle of the plains and you're spending 45 minutes to get to the city. And it just warps your view of the city. It's amazing. All right. Well, this is a little detour on this podcast. And like I said, go listen to my podcast with Steve Gorman, former drummer of the Black Crows. He's been on my podcast several times. Now he had some great stories about, you know, the NTV Rock and Jock Challenge in 1993 and things that you probably want to hear. So thank you all for joining me on the latest broadcast. I'm going to be back in a couple days with another episode. Goodbye. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [BLANK_AUDIO]
Yeah it might be the definition of 'first world problems but it's very much real ... Denver International Airport and it's location in the middle of nowhere plays a big part in how NBA players and more view the city of Denver.
