Once upon a time, critics held it up as the boondoggle of all boondoggles.

Denver International Airport, the Mile High City’s sprawling airport built from scratch 24 miles from the heart of the city, opened Feb. 28, 1995. It was 16 months overdue and $2 billion over its original $2.9 billion budget.

On opening day, DIA was the first airport in the world with the capability to land three planes simultaneously in conditions that limited visibility. Media attention leading up to the opening, however, focused on a baggage-handling system that was billed as state-of-the-art but failed spectacularly and was a major driver of the construction delays and cost overages.

Twenty-five years later, DIA is the fifth-busiest airport in the country and 20th busiest in the world. More than 69 million passengers passed through its concourses and tented terminal in 2019, almost 20 million more than it was designed to accommodate.

Once (and occasionally still) the butt of jokes for being built so far east of Denver that “it may as well be in Kansas,” the airport has seen the metro area expand up to its doorstep. A busy RTD rail line now provides another alternative to an expensive cab ride to the terminal.

In a flashback to those early days, construction controversies have dogged DIA in recent years as it keeps growing, but its financial impact on Colorado is as massive as it is undeniable.

DIA contributed $33.5 billion to the state economy in 2018, supporting 259,000 jobs, according to a Colorado Department of Transportation study. Booked for a combined 880 departures and arrivals on that first day in 1995, the airport today averages 1,700 flights in and out every day. It’s the state’s portal to more than 215 destinations, including 28 cities in other countries.

“It’s the last large commercial airport constructed in the U.S.,” George Hamlin, a Virginia-based aviation industry consultant, said last week. “The good news is we’re talking about the 25th anniversary and we’re not saying a word about the baggage system not working.”

An ambitious plan

DIA’s history dates to the early 1980s. In 1983, a 36-year-old Latino lawyer named Federico Peña was elected mayor of Denver. Years later, the ribbon of highway connecting DIA to Interstate 70 would be named for him.

In 1983, Peña campaigned on a plan to expand Stapleton International Airport — Denver’s tiny, noisy, congested airport in the northeast corner of the city — across I-70 to the north onto the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The plan won the support of most municipalities in the metro area, with some glaring exceptions. Leaders in Adams County hated the idea of an even larger airport raining noise on their constituents. They vowed that “they were going to sue us forever,” Peña recalled.

Peña eventually met some of those leaders for dinner and heard their concerns. They began crafting an ambitious plan. Denver would seek to annex land in Adams County to build a new airport away from established neighborhoods. In return, that county’s elected leaders would campaign hard for the plan in their communities. Ultimately, only Adams County voters could green-light the annexation.

In 1988, voters did just that and an annexation agreement covering 54 square miles was approved.

Then came the challenge of building in a city that Peña described as “broke.”

In the 1980s, Colorado’s energy industry had gone bust, as had a number of other segments of the economy. Unemployment in the city was 2% higher than the national average. Downtown, 31% of office space sat vacant, Peña said.

But Stapleton airport was still bustling. It was the sixth-busiest airport in the country despite a propensity for delays and traffic jams that would ripple out to the coasts. It was Denver’s key placement as a midcontinent hub for air travel that helped convince federal officials to put $500 million toward the new airport.

“They understood we were a clog in the national transportation system,” Peña said.

United Airlines and Continental Airlines, the two biggest carriers doing business in Denver, originally backed the new airport plan, but reversed course after the city built a new concourse at Stapleton to keep that airport running smoothly in the interim, Peña said. In return, he shut down plans for a new Stapleton runway and put both carriers on month-to-month leases.

“Then, of course, we needed to sell airport revenue bonds without airline agreements,” the former mayor said. “First time in the history of the country that had happened. The airlines thought we couldn’t do it. I think they figured we were over our heads.”

The bonds did sell — with inflated interested rates — and in 1989 the city finally broke ground.

“I gave a speech to the Rotary Club the other day on this, and after I spoke the audience was exhausted,” Peña said. “This is why no one else has done one in the country since. (Airports) are far too complicated.”

Baggage and blizzards

It was up to Peña’s successor, the city’s first African-American mayor, Wellington Webb, to bring DIA in for a landing.

Taking office in 1991, Webb’s administration oversaw 85% of DIA’s construction. Landing fees were the vital source of revenue needed to pay for the project, so the new mayor’s first challenge was getting United to sign on the dotted line. Continental already had signed a commitment with Peña, shortly before the airline declared bankruptcy for a second time.

After Webb had what could be described as some stern conversations with United leadership in Denver and over the phone, he sent advisers to Illinois to meet with the airline again about leasing gates at DIA. A deal was struck — with one catch.

“United wanted this new baggage system,” Webb said. “They made it a requirement of the contract getting done. That was the first change order at the airport.”

That ill-fated computerized baggage system would go down in DIA lore, along with alleged alien bunkers and ties to the New World Order. Unlike the airport’s catalog of conspiracy theories, it never blossomed into a marketing opportunity.

A Denver Post report from 1994 referred to the $186 million automated baggage system, designed by the since-acquired Dallas company BAE Automated Systems, as a “baggage mangler.” Its fast-moving carts were known for dumping bags on sharp turns, and its automated tag-reading system never effectively got bags where they needed to go without human intervention.

“We went through the embarrassment of going through the test run and having baggage that was designed to go to Casper, Wyoming, instead going to Shanghai,” Webb said. “It worked on a circular track, but DIA is an airport that is laid out longitudinally.”

United used part of the system for outgoing flights until shutting it down entirely in late summer 2005, according to a New York Times story at the time. Portions of the system’s spine are still intact in DIA’s tunnels, useless but not in the way enough to warrant paying for their removal.

When the day finally did come to shut down Stapleton and move into DIA, the line of de-icing trucks, baggage tugs and other support vehicles formed a convoy that stretched the full 22-mile distance between the two airports.

Snow flurries and heavy fog settled on DIA on Feb. 27, 1995, reducing visibility to 1,200 feet, a weather development that Webb said led him to wonder “why God didn’t like me.” But the airport opened the next day. United carried the first flights in and out.

Peña was there, representing President Bill Clinton’s administration as the secretary of transportation.

“It was a great day and it was satisfying to all of us; to many, many people,” Peña said. “Because, first of all, we had shown the country that Denver, Colorado … could actually do something like this. And, secondly, to all the people that did not believe, who thought it was too much of a risk to do these things, we proved to them that they were wrong.”

Webb would win a second term later that year, but his work at DIA wasn’t done.

His administration launched an in-house concession contracting program dedicated to providing opportunities for women- and minority-owned businesses at the airport that is still in place today. In September 1998, British Airways launched DIA’s first continuously operating intercontinental flight, providing service to London. Lufthansa Airlines signed on with a nonstop flight to Frankfurt in 2000.

Webb employed his favorite negotiating tactic when seeking to lure the two international carriers, he said. He brought their representatives to Red Rocks Amphitheatre, then to dinner at the Fort Restaurant in Morrison. Once a few rounds of margaritas had arrived at the table, it was time to start talking business with his counterparts from lower altitudes.

“You can’t have a Denver International Airport without international airlines,” Webb said.

Webb, now 79, has one enduring regret about his handling of DIA. In October 1997, a blizzard dumped almost 2 feet of snow on Denver. Thousands of people were trapped at the airport and on Peña Boulevard in part because Webb’s administration focused on clearing streets in the city instead of around DIA. The storm came a week after Webb held a news conference showing off the city’s snow removal equipment.

“Just one I wish I had back,” Webb said. “Obviously, Mother Nature whipped my behind with all that snow.”

Looking toward the future

Mayor Michael Hancock was an intern in the Peña administration and wrote a paper on DIA’s financing for a college class. He views DIA’s success as a testament to vision and perseverance.

“What it tells us is that while we might get some bumps and bruises in the process of getting something great done, don’t stop,” he said. “Because once it’s done, people won’t even talk about that stuff.”

Hancock also has been eager to see more international destinations added to the airport’s offerings during his tenure.

Later this month, United — fresh off signing a new lease agreement that will see its DIA presence grow to 90 gates — will launch a flight to Nassau in the Bahamas.

Southwest Airlines on Wednesday made its pitch to a City Council committee seeking to grow from 24 gates to 40 in the airport. Both airlines plan to significantly boost their flight traffic.

United just invested $130 million in a new high-tech baggage handling system under Concourse B. The airline is still figuring out everything its so-called “Big Blue” system is capable of, said Jonathan Arkin, the airline’s ramp area manager at DIA, but on its busiest day so far it moved more than 22,000 bags and jammed 15 times.

The airlines’ growth is being made possible by a $1.5 billion gate expansion project at DIA. Touching all three concourses, the project is part of a $3.5 billion capital improvement plan at the airport meant to set it up for a future in which passenger traffic is expected to grow to 80 million people per year by 2025, airport CEO Kim Day said.

Other improvements include the purchase of an additional train set to add to the tracks of the airport’s terminal-to-concourse rail line, upgrades to in-terminal baggage systems and — most controversially — a $650 million overhaul of the Jeppesen Terminal itself that could end up costing much more than that.

The city fired its private partners in that project in August after a year of squabbling over which side was responsible for delays and cost overruns. Day and other DIA officials have come under scrutiny for how they have handled the project, which has left the terminal in a state of semi-demolished, semi-built disarray. With Greeley-based contractor Hensel Phelps set to relaunch construction this month, Hancock and Day defended the direction of the project and the airport at large.

“Every decision we have made, I think, has been in the right direction for this airport,” Day said.

With all the work going on inside DIA, city leaders also have their eyes turned outward. Approved for 12 runways, DIA today has only six. Officials are in talks with the Federal Aviation Administration about a new east-west runway, a project Day said could break ground in the next five years.

“The main thing that makes this airport so great is that this airport has a future,” Day said. “I’ve often said I work at aviation Disneyland.”

Even at full build-out, the airport will only take about half the vast expanse of prairie it occupies. That means an opportunity for more non-aviation development to go with the Westin hotel that opened on the south end of the terminal in 2015.

Hancock’s announcement in 2012 that Denver aimed to build an “Airport City” with new commercial development on DIA property sparked a clash with Adams County. The dispute was resolved amicably in 2015 when voters in both jurisdictions supported a revenue-sharing measure that will give Adams County and cities there a 50% cut of taxes raised from new development on 1,500 acres of DIA land.

Adams County Commissioner Steve O’Dorisio co-chaired the campaign for that 2015 measure and was overjoyed with the result. He also was the first witness called in a civil trial last year in which the county and the cities of Brighton, Thornton and Aurora are suing DIA for $33.5 million over alleged aircraft noise violations.

“You know relationships — good, strong, regional relationships — can sometimes be complicated,” O’Dorisio said of Adams County’s ties with Denver and DIA. “On one issue you may be connected at the hip, and the next moment you’re having to ask for some legal assistance to settle a dispute.”

With new airport-adjacent projects in Aurora, Commerce City and Denver, the region is buying into developing an “aerotropolis” around DIA even as the airport takes legal action to prevent homes from getting too close.

For Webb, DIA is a success story shared across the region and across four mayoral administrations. Whatever the next 25 years hold in store there, he’s willing to bet it will keep plenty of people busy.

“The thing about airports is it’s never done. It’s never finished,” he said. “If you go to a city and the airport isn’t under construction, that airport is dying.”

Updated March 3, 2020, at 10:08 a.m. Because of an error by a reporter, the projected cost of DIA’s current capital improvement plan was originally misreported. The projects included under the plan are expected to cost $3.5 billion.