On Sept. 27, 2007, two weeks after the city of Colorado Springs approached local developers to gauge their interest in providing new offices and other facilities for the U.S. Olympic Committee, Mayor Lionel Rivera convened a meeting with Vice Mayor Larry Small, two representatives of the newly formed Downtown Development Authority and LandCo Equity Partners Chairman Ray Marshall and LandCo President Jim Brodie.

The purpose of the meeting, according to DDA Board Chairman Nolan Schriner and who today confirmed those in attendance, was to discuss the authority's coolness to LandCo's plan to build a skybridge over Colorado Avenue and link it from a city parking garage to a new office building LandCo was developing downtown. LandCo had approached the DDA two months earlier to ask the governmental entity whether it could help fund a portion of the building LandCo had proposed.

The disclosure of the Sept. 27 meeting comes amid allegations of a conflict of interest on the part of Rivera, a vice president of investments with the local office of UBS Financial Services. Rivera represented Marshall as a client at the same time the city was asking developers to submit proposals on providing new office space for a downtown USOC headquarters, Marshall's attorney has said. Rivera has maintained he had no conflict of interest in any USOC dealings.

LandCo was one of four development groups that submitted a plan to provide the USOC with new facilities, and on March 31, 2008, was formally announced as the developer.
In May, Springs businessman Ron Johnson filed a conflict-of-interest allegation against Rivera, which is now the subject of an investigation by the city's Independent Ethics Commission.

Neither Rivera, Johnson, nor Johnson attorney Lindsay Fischer could immediately be reached for comment. The meeting was shown on the mayor's calendar for the day, according to an examination of city records by The Gazette.

Small initially didn't remember the meeting, but at The Gazette's request, he reviewed his 2007 calendar, which he said jogged his memory.

"My recollection is that meeting had to do with the DDA's decision not to provide TIF (tax increment financing) funding for sky bridges in the downtown area," he said. "Our Imagine Downtown plan encourages the streetscapes and the pedestrian traffic, and we had developed a policy that we wouldn't apply TIF money for sky bridges."

Small confirmed that the mayor called the meeting.

"He was asking about the policy," he said. "He was wondering why we did it, what the benefit and impacts on the downtown would be from sky bridges, and is it something that we would consider or we just wouldn't absolutely consider at all."

The mayor "argued" for sky bridges, Small said.
Schriner recalled that the meeting lasted about 20 minutes, and that Rivera, Marshall and Brodie said little. Schriner said he did some of the talking, explaining why the DDA didn't like the idea of Marshall's skybridge.

Downtown boosters had said that skybridges take pedestrians off the street and away from downtown shops, and downtown supporters also had said at the time that allowing the skybridge would set a precedent.

Schriner said Rivera's business ties with Marshall, which Marshall's attorney disclosed to the Ethics Commission this month, never came up at the meeting. Likewise, the fact that the city had launched a process to find new downtown offices for the Springs-based USOC never came up, Schriner said, although he said he and other downtown supporters already had of the city's effort to find space for the USOC.

However, a scenario in which Rivera convened a meeting with Marshall, Brodie and DDA board members created the appearance that he did so to argue on LandCo's behalf, said Chantell Taylor, director of Colorado Ethics Watch, a watchdog group.

"Even if he didn't directly lobby on behalf of LandCo, just his use of influence and power to bring those people together for that discussion seems improper, in light of the fact that he didn't disclose the relationship (with Marshall)," she said.

"It raises more questions about whether he was improperly using his influence to advantage landCo or Ray Marshall," she said.

Gazette reporter Daniel J. Chacon contributed to this report.