A bill for an ordinance adopting a new Article XIII in Chapter 20, Denver Revised Municipal Code to authorize the creation of tourism improvement districts. Amends Chapter 20 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to enable the creation of Tourism Improvement Districts (TIDs) to fund tourism improvements and services citywide. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 6-7-17.
All four questions. Is that right? Correct. All right. Under pending Councilman New has called out council bill 565 to postpone final consideration. Correct? Correct. All right, Councilman, news night. All right, Madam Secretary, please put the first items in a block on our screen. Councilman, to go ahead and ask your question. Go ahead. Okay. This is going to be the first and final consideration. This is for final consideration. 5326. Just say the question. I wanted Richard Scharff to come up and talk a little bit about the convention center. There would be one of the primary beneficiaries of the new tax tourism taxing district and the amazing contribution that the convention center has for our city and and what the expansion of the convention center will have so our residents can have a better idea. Thank you. Richard Schaaf, president and CEO of Visit Denver. Currently, every year, the Colorado Convention Center generates anywhere from 5 to $600 million a year of economic impact. The conservative study that was done by a strategic advisory group that looked at the National Western and the Colorado Convention Center expansion felt that conservatively Denver could add another $85 million economic impact if we expanded the center, and that was primarily to do multiple events at the same time. And then, of course, go after some of the larger events that currently can't come back to Denver. However, the larger events weren't included in the economic impact. So just to highlight a couple, we have the 22,000 person American Dental Association that would like to come back in the twenties but need more space. And we have speech, language and hearing a national association with 14,000 people would love to come back, but can't unless we get this new space. So a lot of additional economic impact as a result of the expansion. And then, of course, everyone probably has heard where we're growing in the metro area, about 7500 new hotel rooms in the metro area by 2018. So we really need to generate more demand to fill these hotel rooms. But it's no taxpayer dollars. It's really tourism dollars that'll be helping pay for the expansion. Is that correct? Correct. That is an additional 1% fee on a checkout tax when you leave a hotel that is paid for by the visitor. And of course, that will benefit all of the city and the residents alike. And I think I say this probably more often than I probably should, but, you know, tourism visas, they they create economic impact . They create jobs. The new the new AC Marriott Meridian that's going to open up here probably in about a month is going to generate another 200 jobs on that property, plus, obviously, a lot of other jobs to support it. But visitors also pay taxes that residents don't have to pay. And according to our figures in the state tourism office, if we took tourism out of the economy, each resident would have to pay about $500 more in taxes just to keep the same basic services and programs in place. Well, thank you, Richard. Thanks. Great job, your staff. Thank you very much. In other words, I have always asked Brendan to come up and we've had these tax exemption issues tonight and just wanted to make sure that all of us understood what these were about. And so if you could give us a better explanation, please. Sure. Brendan. So just to be just to be clear, are we still under the tiered or is this under a different. That's another bit of the charitable. Okay. So this is under. Yes. 653. Now, this this is 526 through 529. Okay, Madam Secretary.