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You know, Aurora might be known as many things:

But in the end, conversations like the ones I had preparing for today’s speech with Aurora residents, business owners, movers and Mark Shakers are not just daydreams, or scripted for video. They are everyday conversations I have at work, at meetings, at community events, and even just out on the street. They are everyday conversations I have with medical professionals and Fortune 500 companies, with small businesses and developers, with immigrants and newcomers. They are conversations that reflect a common belief: Aurora is a city of opportunity.

So what is it that makes this a city of opportunity? Opportunities are not just hopes, they aren’t just daydreams. They are built upon real land, real infrastructure, real people and real community support. They are what separates growth for growth’s sake from growth with a purpose.

In 1948, the city directory listed only seven doctors and one dentist. Since then, we’ve seen Aurora’s first medical clinic in 1953, our first community hospitals in the 1970s, the creation of The Medical Center of Aurora in the 1990s and the development of the Anschutz Medical Campus in the 2000s. Today, Aurora is the only place in Colorado with an MD program, and the Anschutz Medical Campus has produced a collective 9,000 advanced degrees since the campus opened. Regardless of the debate on how people access care, demand for services has never been higher, and if you want to enter the medical field, your opportunity is in Aurora.

University Hospital, Children’s Hospital Colorado and the VA hospital get many headlines and deservedly so. But, a place with high demand is The Medical Center of Aurora. It has evolved from two small community hospitals in the ‘70s into a large tertiary medical center with six campuses that include three ERs, a rehabilitation hospital and a behavioral health hospital as part of the largest health care provider in the metro area. With nearly 1,900 employees, The Medical Center of Aurora is the third largest private employer in the city. And, with over 100,000 admissions and ER visits each year, this hospital keeps busy as another opportunity-creator in Aurora.

In case you didn’t know, The Medical Center of Aurora is the metro area’s first community hospital to twice earn the highest nursing honor in the country, and was the state’s only hospital to make a national watchdog group’s top hospital list for patient safety in 2016.

We are home to the technologies and advancements that will power their practice and drive the development of cures, quality of life and business applications.

The Fitzsimons Innovation Campus and the Anschutz Medical Campus are gaining a global reputation for supporting companies that will change and enhance health care.

Companies like Sharklet Technologies, which uses microscopic patterns to create antimicrobial surfaces, and Atara Biotherapeutics, a $300 million company, have chosen to expand their operations from other states to grow their technologies at Fitzsimons.

And they are bringing not only cutting-edge and competitive jobs to Aurora but also workers who have discovered that this city is the perfect place to call home. Sharklet tells us that about half of its employees here live in Aurora.

Companies like Precision Biopsy are attracting investors, such as the $40 million that’s been put into a system to provide the most accurate prostate biopsy procedures.

In the past couple of months, visitors from Japanese venture capitalists have been touring our campuses to explore the innovations coming out of the companies growing here.

CU’s Center for Surgical Innovation at Bioscience I is considered a center of excellence in the evolving field of surgery. More than 3,000 surgeons from around the world travel here every year to for the latest hands-on education and training.

The Fitzsimons Innovation Campus also attracts homegrown companies with technologies spinning out of our many academic institutions. Next will come the new multi-tenant building called Bioscience 3. The 100,000-square-foot building will accommodate the expansion of existing companies and will attract more mature companies looking at potential relocation to Colorado and Aurora.

So whether you have the next brilliant idea in transforming medicine, or you’re looking for the smartest investment in bioscience, your opportunity is in Aurora.

If you don’t believe me, just listen to what Sharklet’s CEO, Mark Spiecker, says:

“We plan to keep the company right here in Aurora. We have deep ties to Colorado, to Aurora. This is a great place for us to grow.”

Stanley Marketplace is our newest epicenter of small business, with more than 50 independently owned restaurants, shops and service-oriented places connecting with each other and the community. You heard Mark Shaker talking earlier about his experience fulfilling his dream in Aurora. Without a doubt, this catalyst site is creating an abundance of opportunity in this evolving section of the city.

We work hard to make sure small businesses succeed here. For more than two years now, Aurora has served as the host site for the Aurora-South Metro Small Business Development Center, extending business support not only to our own business community but regionally to Arapahoe, Douglas and parts of Jefferson and Adams counties. In Arapahoe and Douglas counties alone, that support has resulted in more than a thousand jobs created or retained and 38 new businesses started.

There are so many success stories to tell, but one of my favorites is Dry Dock Brewing Company’s story. They have worked with our small biz folks and the city as a whole for many years, consulting with our experts for countless hours, earning a $4.5 million SBA loan, and helping us refine our processes in some cases to make doing business easier in Aurora. Dry Dock started with a couple of employees and 900 square feet. Today, they have 46 employees, 30,000 square feet and 23 Great American Beer Festival medals, and 7 World Beer Cup awards to brag about.

 

We take the time every year to recognize the contributions of our small business community through the Aurora Business Recognition Awards program. If you know a small business worth honoring, please visit the city’s website and nominate them for a 2017 award.

I’m happy to say that it’s not just the small businesses that are thriving in Aurora. We have more than a hundred businesses in Aurora that employ a hundred-plus people. The Aurora Economic Development Council has told me that aside from Gaylord, nearly 75 primary employers have created more than 10,000 primary jobs since I have been in office. Aerospace, defense and healthcare industries employ a quarter of Aurora’s workforce.

We are thrilled to see Fortune 100 companies establishing roots and creating opportunity in big ways in Aurora.

Just take a quick trip out I-70, along E-470 and up Pena Boulevard, and you can see the buildings rising, with some big names on the side.

Just a few months after opening its 450,000-square-foot sortation center in Majestic Commercenter, Amazon is building a massive, 1-million-square-foot fulfillment center at Prologis Park 70. It’s hard to wrap your head around how large 1 million square feet is. I’ve stood out in the middle of the building, and words can’t quite capture the enormity of it. The building is the length of 20 football fields, and there is enough steel in the facility to construct multiple Eiffel towers.

When Amazon opens the fulfillment center later this year, it brings with it 1,000 new jobs, and the full-time jobs there pay well above the market retail rate. And they are excited to be here, as you will hear.

VIDEO TESTIMONIAL FROM AMAZON

A little farther north, Walmart spent more than $13 million last year to purchase 169 acres in Porteos for a planned distribution center—that’s nearly the same acreage electronics giant Apple’s rambling campus in Silicon Valley.

On the horizon is another big name – JP Morgan Chase – which plans to open two data centers in Colorado, one of which will be in Aurora. What’s really exciting about this is the potential it holds in a growth industry because data centers tend to cluster together.

And there is a lot of room for other big names to follow. Business parks in Aurora—with total land amounting to nearly 15,000 acres—are ready to accommodate companies looking to set up shop in this region. Nearly 2,000 acres of that is shovel ready.

Did you know that 13 Vatican Cities could fit on Majestic Commercenter’s 1,500 acres? And so can six additional 1-million-square-foot buildings. They are getting ready to start construction in June on the state’s largest speculative building—a mammoth warehouse slated to open early next year that is big enough to store 10 Statue of Liberties.

Still not convinced of the opportunities? Try these numbers: At 1,287 acres, the Porteos development is slightly larger than Balboa Park in San Diego. High Point has 1,100 acres of business park potential. Horizon Uptown has 501 acres of commercial and retail promise.

Some of Aurora’s fastest growing industries are in e-commerce, food distribution and advanced manufacturing, setting the stage for rapid growth in our industrial sector.

Yes, Fortune 500 companies are knocking on Aurora’s door, and we are ready to show them how their opportunity is in Aurora.

Amazon, Walmart, Chase. It takes a big city—with a big commitment to working with business—to attract such big names. Did you know Aurora is the third-largest city in Colorado in terms of population and the second largest in land area? You probably did.

Here’s one more thing to think about. Washington, D.C., would fit inside all the undeveloped land in Aurora. That is opportunity indeed. It’s an opportunity that we are planning for today so that when development comes knocking, we are ready.

This preparation for business growth and expansion involves completely reimagining the city’s comprehensive plan, which we’re calling Aurora Places. Since last fall, we have involved the whole community in creating a vision for how we want Aurora to look 10 to 20 years from now—and what kinds of places we will become known for. We’ll start rolling out a draft plan in the fall to find out what people think of this roadmap for Aurora’s future.

Our planning also involves the continued foresight of Aurora Water, which is committed to affordable and sustainable resources for a growing population, with an emphasis on conservation. The city just won the National Mayor’s Conservation Challenge for the third year in a row.

It also involves critical infrastructure improvements, like the Sixth Avenue Parkway Extension. In 2018, construction will begin on this crucial link from the city core and Buckley Air Force Base to Aurora’s eastern frontier.

And I use the word “frontier” with a purpose, because if you want to see some of the areas with the biggest opportunities in Aurora, go east, my friends. That’s where you’ll find planned developments like Painted Prairie, Fine Business Park, Horizon Uptown, Aurora Highlands and Aurora One. And that’s where you’ll find some of the larger, transformative projects that will continue to redefine Aurora for years to come.

So if you are looking for a community that’s growing intelligently, that’s connecting populations efficiently and that’s providing the epitome of a full-service city, your opportunity is in Aurora.

Just listen to Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority CEO Steve VanNurden:

“Come back 10 years from now, and you see what this campus is, compared with what it is today. It will be spectacular.”

So you can see where the opportunities lie, what industries are key to those opportunities, and how we’re planning to make those opportunities available. But to truly make Aurora a city of opportunity, we must embrace the knowledge that we are an increasingly international city, both in the great people who live in Aurora, and the people around the globe who know about Aurora.

Last year, Aurora joined the Strong Cities Network and is one of only two cities in Colorado to be members of this global network dedicated to working together to combat violent extremism. As a result of its membership, Aurora is an official stop for the U.S. State Department’s foreign visitors and we host delegations from around the globe, who come here to learn about best practices in immigrant and refugee integration.

In just the past year, Aurora has welcomed city officials from Africa, journalists from Europe, and academics and nonprofit organizers from Asia.

But it’s not just people from around the world coming to Aurora; it’s Aurora making positive news worldwide. Strong Cities Network has profiled Aurora’s successes to its international audience, and we have traveled to Canada and London to spread the word of what we’re doing right.

In Aurora, one in five of our residents was born in another country. This is a statistic we are proud of and believe makes us stronger through our diversity. Efforts by the Aurora Office of International and Immigrant Affairs, Aurora Sister Cities International and the annual Global Fest show the world we are a diverse and welcoming city of opportunity for all our residents.

That is being recognized more prominently by such awards as the National League of Cities’ City Cultural Diversity Award. Aurora was one of only six cities across the U.S. to receive such recognition for creative and effective programs to improve and promote cultural diversity. And this month, the U.S. Small Business Administration recognized Aurora’s AvTech International as Colorado’s Small Business Exporter of the Year.

These efforts are paying dividends. Just this week, the country of El Salvador opened its consulate in Aurora, becoming the first country to open a diplomatic post in Colorado outside of Denver and opening up economic opportunities for Aurora’s Salvadoran community.

And why did El Salvador choose to open the consulate in Aurora? Here’s what the new consul general, Manuel Castillo, had to say:

“We decided to come to Aurora because not only the openness of the local government and the mayor has been so helpful with us, but also the leadership of our community here. The potential of the relationship between El Salvador and Colorado has a lot of opportunity, starting here in Aurora.”

No matter where you come from, no matter your background, in Aurora you’ll find a community dedicated to embracing its diversity, empowering its entrepreneurs and encouraging inclusivity. In Aurora you’ll find a city of opportunity.

In the end, I don’t think I can say it any better than Dean Saitta (SAY-TAH), a professor of anthropology and director of the urban studies program at the University of Denver. He wrote, “In my opinion, Aurora, not Denver, is the city to watch for progress in creating a truly inclusive and intercultural city.”

In 2017, there are so many great things happening in Aurora, there isn’t time to begin to mention all of them.  For example, I’ve said little today about light rail and TOD development, the Gaylord Hotel and surrounding environs, Visit Aurora, Buckley Air Force Base, or opportunities around Front Range Airport.

However, I do want to briefly update you on two more things. They relate to history and the arts – two things many consider to be part of the basic soul of a community.

Aurora is blessed to have people like Rick and Diane Crandall in our city.  The work they have done on the Colorado Freedom Memorial is far beyond a labor of love. If you haven’t visited, please do so on Saturday, the 27^th, for the Colorado Remembers Memorial Day commemoration.  You will understand just how special these people—and this place—really is. 

I hope their efforts will be joined in the next couple of years by a new Korean War Memorial proposed to be located in Aurora.  Efforts are on-going to make that Memorial a reality.  Its supporters are equally devoted to achieving a lasting memory to the men and women who fought and died for our future.

I finally want to remind you that I believe a city our size deserves its own Cultural and Performing Arts Center.  Last year I called upon those in the private sector to come forward with unsolicited proposals designed to find a way to work with the city to make such a center real.  I’m pleased to tell you today that I am in discussions with such a private sector good corporate citizen, and I hope to have a proposal for Council to consider by this fall.  I believe that possibility provides an exciting future to help feed our soul.