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79
Gassing up on ca_ mpus Total hopes to close deal with Auraria by year's end
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Christoph_e r Anderson The METROPOLITAN
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Students who come to the Auraria Higher Education Center to fill their minds may one day be able to fill their cars, too. Officials at Total Petroleum and Auraria are negotiating a deal that would lease 40 campus parking spaces for a gas station. Auraria officials said parking.lot B, at 7th Street and westbound Auraria Parkway, goes unused much of the time and would be more valuable to the campus as a profit-generating filling 路station. The deal is still in its beginning stages; said Mary Ferrell, executive director of the Auraria Foundation, the private fund-raising arm of the campus. But a consultant to Total Petroleum, Howard Grueskin, said a lease could be signed within a few months. "I would guess that we would have it all on paper by the end of the year," Grueskin said. Ferrell declined to say how much revenue the gas station would bring to Auraria but estimated that at the least it would equal the $40,000 per year the 18,000 square-foot lot raises through parking fees. Officials predict the gas station will be successful, saying that when it comes to gas stations, lower downtown is on empty. Both Ferrell and Grueskin said the plan of a gas station in the area has been discussed for years but neither could remember when talks first started. Both said there still is a chance the deal will not go through. "There is a lot of stuff to go through
John McDonoughrThe METROPOLITAN FILL 'ER UP: Parking lot B, on the north side of Auraria Parkway, may be the site of a new Total Petroleum station. yet besides the lease, but that has to come first of course," Grueskin said. Ferrell said Total still has to get zoning permission from Denver. Although the foundation is negotiating the lease, the Auraria Board, the primary decision-making body of the Auraria Higher Education Center, ultimately would decide whether to approve the deal. The last time the Auraria Board proposed trading campus space for private enterprise, the political equivalent of a barroom fight broke out invotving Metro, Auraria officials, Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and Rocky Mountain News columnist Gene Amole. During that deal, the Auraria Board tried to muscle through a lease that would have allowed AMC Theaters to build
additional theaters on the site of the campus tennis courts, despite objections from Metro president Sheila Kaplan and Metro's student representatives. Kaplan said she. did not see the trade off in parking for a campus gas station the same as the AMC deal, which would have taken away land used .for academic purposes. "I guess the bottom line is that piece of land (lot B) is across Auraria Parkway," Kaplan said. "I think we all felt it was an opportunity to take a piece of land that was not of any real value to us and bring in some路resources to Auraria." Kaplan and other officials said Auraria would not be losing parking spaces because of a possible deal to use parking at the Pepsi Center sports arena, which also would be built near Auraria.
WEST John Savvas Robertsrfhe METROPOLITAN Pepsi Center . officials still are involved in negotiations with the city and have not yet committed to Denver as a site for the arena.
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