|
I live here, okay?
Yes, the damn thing looks like a circus tent. Yes, it has its own weather system. Yes, it's in the middle of BFE out on the plains. There are some parts underground, the trains are very advanced....
But there are no nazis, aliens or mason/bloodline of christ/Wellington Webb as anti-christ connections. It is not a secret base, an internment camp or a re-education camp. It's an airport built for growth and the local environment. (And no, Wal-Mart trucks are not being used to transport Martial Law signs.)
The closest thing we have to nazis are the repugs in the State Assembly and Focus on the Family and the American Family Association in Colorado Springs (so they're bad enough.)
The closest thing we have to aliens are the paranoid psycho libertarians and surivalists on one end and the Boulder granolas on the other. Looney, but harmless. Mostly.
As for the Masons, that might be true, and Wellington Webb might be the anti-christ. (Kidding!!!!) Denver has a new mayor, by the way.
Stapleton was closed because it's the middle of the city and jets are noisy suckers. Plus, we really were outgrowing Stapleton, and Stapleton had no where to expand, being surrounded by business, Lowry AFB (now closed) and the Fitzsimmons VA Hospital and low income housing. It's called planning - building BEFORE we are stuck and desperate. Would that we had done the same with our freeways and lightrail, but that's another story.
The land out on the plains was cheap, folks. At the time, it was, at best, ranch land. And it was owned by a former mayor, who sold them the land.... yeah, this should have been investigated for conflict of interest. Oops. Repugs run the place. *shrug*
Yes, a lot of dirt got moved around. It's not Kansas - think rolling hills, not prairie flat. Airports, and especially runways, have to be very flat. Land in Phoenix requires excavation, and that really is flat as the bottom of an iron skillet. Plus, the earth has to be tamped down - one must have a FIRM surface and nature doesn't go around creating such. Go hang around a construction site where they're pouring concrete - this is standard operating procedure.
Yes, we have problems with strong winds, but we have them everywhere in the Front Range (the east side of the Rockies) and there is a piece of weather physics most people don't understand - winds at our altitude are much less destructive than a same speed wind at sea level is. Our air is THIN. We get 40 mph winds regularly, 60's are not uncommon and 80s happen frequently enough that we accept it. But a 40 mile an hour wind at 1 mile altitude is like a 15 mile an hour wind at sea level in terms of force. Fewer molecules, remember that! Stapleton had really bad winds because the winds got disrupted by LoDo - lower Downtown, where the skyscrapers are - and was comparable to DIA in that aspect. Also, because we are so close to the Rockies, we don't have prevailing winds. Strange, but true. Wind can and does come from any direction, depending on where the high and low pressure fronts are and if they're stalled and if so, where they're stalled. I have seen winds at 1 mile off the ground blow N to S while the winds at ground level were blowing W to E. Mountains are funny that way. Wind shear is a problem from Laramie to Pueblo - 250 miles.
And yes, DIA does have an interesting weather system, both inside and out. Condensation sometimes causes mists inside and clouds near the ceiling, but that happens in a lot of buildings, including a Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago. DIA does get pocket thunder storms and rain storms because 1) it is on the far edge of the Rocky Mountain Rain Shadow (where rain begins to build and drop again after coming down off the mountains) and 2) has a significantly different heat pattern than the surrounding plains, since it has a heckova lot of concrete the plains don't have. those two factors mean that sometimes it's raining at the airport and no where else, but NOAA and independent meteorologists call these "microclimates" and study them a lot. It happens.
Anyway, regarding In 1993-5, Denver was entering our "Silicon Mountain" Phase. We had a lot of high tech industry and it was looking like we were going to be the next Silicon Valley. WE had Qwest, Raytheon, United, and many others. To an extent, it is still true, but it's not as great as previously thought. However, at the time, the city planners believed that we needed the big airport and would grow it really fast. We were wrong. Shit happens like that. They're not psychic.
Contrary to the "fewer gates and runways" argument, DIA is far bigger in gate, building and runway size than stapleton, plus it has the room to expand which stapleton didn't, and has the modifications and upgrades that mean we wont have to build another frocking airport for 50 years (that cable and those pumping facilities are for future use).
Look, you can look at this thing as 1990s WPA. Denver needed jobs for construction and low skill workers, for technicians and just new jobs in general. Airports come with a lot of federal, state and corporate money. We weren't adverse to taking it. Pork? You betcha! Bacon, ham, bellies, trotters, loin, chops..... Am I proud of it, no. But I'm honest about it. It happened and the money can't be "unspent."
As for the murals, art is... well... art. Sometimes it's just.... weird. Ever seen a Mondrian? A Belew? A Garfunkel? I can't explain it anymore than I can explain the pots and the toilets on the freeways in Phoenix where my mom lives. Public art is... sometimes not up to Rembrandt's standards. As for the fact that they have been painted over, the plan was always that the murals would be a changing gallery of contemporary local art. Airports aren't treated gently, and when a mural (or a hanging garden or a sculpture) becomes damaged or needs refurbishing or replacing, it has to happen or the airport looks shabby and we can't have that for our visitors and ski guests. Tourism is important, you know! To Quote: "There are several venues in the airport that feature changing exhibits. The main exhibition space is located on the connecting bridge between the Terminal on Level 6 and the security checkpoints leading to Concourse A. Shows change quarterly and include work by regional artists, folk art and crafts and topics dealing with history, transportation and cultural interests."
Masons do not call their halls "Great Halls"; they call them the Hall. Just like churches have "Fellowship Halls" and colleges call dorms and buildings Halls. It's an archaic world for building.
The train system was intended to be a security thing, a transit that was not above ground (winters can be a bitch here), and an efficient way to move large numbers of people without the traffic logjams I've seen at Ohare, LAX, Dulles, JFK, LaGuardia, Atlanta.... need I go on? (Moo, Moo.... ) Remember, this was built during the Unibomber's tenure (pun intended), so being able to cut off transportation between the outside, at large community and those getting on the planes was a very good idea. It works okay, and the security isn't bad. Of course, the trains may someday be a target, but getting to them won't be easy.
The excess infrastructure - the conveyer belts, the tunnels, luggage routes are built as a contingency. The future, folks. We are optimistic that the earth is not going to self-destruct in the next fifty years and we will need this infrastructure. We'll be dang glad we have it when the time comes, I can guarantee that. It does us no good to spend a wagon load of money on an airport we're going to have to renovate and or abandon and replace in 10 years, does it?!? Long term thinking, that's our style out here.
The Tent. This one's hard to explain. Yes, the tent does not conduct heat or show up on a radar.... but that's secondary to the main purpose. This place is EFFICIENT, just like the Crawford playground. Because of the high ceilings, heat rises and the convection keeps the place cool without much in the way of AC - it does use circulation fans, but those take 1/100th of the energy. It's amazingly quiet for an airport - I was in Sky Harbor in Phoenix this summer and felt deafened. During the day, amibent lighting is unnecessary because some light penetrates and diffuses through the roof. At night, very minimal lighting, reflecting from the interior of the roof, allows for excellent ambient light without glare or harshness and at a 10th or less of the cost of lighting, say, National in D.C. The fabric is also very flexible, meaning it can take a lot of snow - and we do sometimes get dumped on - and withstand our high altitude winds. The varying stones.... well.... to quote a friend who worked in purchasing for one of the masonry companies who did some of the flooring, " They were ordered. You can't send them back without it costing - it would have cost the city twice as much if we had ordered the stones and then not used them. So we used them. When we ordered them, we didn't know we'd go over-budget." Oops. Like cost overruns don't happen in every other large scale project.
The capstone.... DIA was not named when the timecapsule capstone was laid. (Since then, it's become like the VLA, Very Large Array, south of us in NM - not really named but named by default). One of the names up for consideration was "New World Airport" and the Masons gave it some inital support and bought some of the inital land from former Mayor Al Pena. Masons do that stuff - they consider it socially responsible to donate land to libraries, schools, hospitals, and yes, airports. (Gee, they do charity. Amazing!!! It's not all secret handshakes and passwords. /sarcasm off.) They are, after all, a public service organization (and not part of some vast conspiracy. Ever seen Masons? I have.... every year in parades and when I go to a family reunion.)
Every corner stone or capstone that is part of a Masonic sponsored project has the symbols mentioned for very good, symbolic reasons. The unfinished stone represents the way we, as people, are unfinished and must continue to grow. The square and compass are symbols of the Universal Architect, because, remember, the Masons are a Deist organization. The "keypad" aint, and next time you're here, please take a good look at it. The hook thingy is a stylized airplane.
The time capsule IS important, to us. For years, our claims to fame have been our mint and our sports teams. (Denver is not very big, all things considered.) We don't expect you to understand, just as we might not understand San Franciscans putting in a cioppino recipe, ghirardelli chocolate, a paint sample from the Golden Gate.... Blackhawk is important to us. Our papers are important to us, and the mayor's tennies... well, it's an injoke and you wouldn't understand. Do us a favor and don't make fun of what we consider important, okay?
As I mentioned above, the airport was put in the middle of nowhere on purpose, so that it would have room to expand and room as a buffer so the neighbors wouldn't complain about the noise. Yes, they forgot to get a gas station to go in - there is one now that went in in 1996. There are now hotels nearby, houses and restaurants. Growth happens, much as we wish it wouldn't cuz we don't have the water.
The Affirmative Action stuff was slander, pure and simple. Much to our shame, we have racists here that make the south look tolerant. (at least in the south, racists have been exposed and been around minorities. This area does not have that advantage.) Not Nazis, just garden variety libertarian-conservatives who wouldn't want their daughters marrying one and can't quite see someone who doesn't go to their church as competant. Yes, some companies (not necessarily AA related - a 1998 post-mortem actually stated that most of the AA companies were just fine. It was the others that tended to be... slackers.) were incompetant on the jobs they bid, but since when is this different from any OTHER government contract?!? Yes, the airport is far more than we need, but again, we expect to grow.
As far as the dead man goes who "committed suicide", I've never heard the name and google gave me several hits for living people and no hits for dead ones or obits but the one article. I can't make an opinion on that until I can call the Rocky Mountain news and ask some questions, but my suspicions are not looking good for the theory. And sorry, but people do kill themselves in interesting ways. We're a creative species.
You may call me a shill for the "party line" but I live here. I've been here long enough to know, to see how this state and city run. This is repug territory, which means that bidness as usual happens between good ol boys who protect their friends. I don't like it, but so it is.... You think DIA is bad, you should see the new stadium they built for no reason than Invesco wanted what Coors and Pepsi already had.... :shrug:
The one thing my mathematical background has taught me is that probability is both larger and smaller than you think. With a project the size and scope of DIA, there are going to be coincidences. (Remember that with 280 million people in the US, 1 person can win the jackpot on the lottery 3 times - the odds against winning are 1 in 100 million.) "Designed plans" to hide things are actually less likely than multiple coincidences. I'll be happy to explain this type of large number mathematics, as well. We psychologists and psychiatrists call this apophrenia - seeing patterns where there are none, or self-selecting patterns. We humans are good at seeing patterns and so sometimes that goes into overdrive. Again, oops.
Politicat, who will happily answer any further questions you may have if you give me time to research if I don't know it off the top of my head.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
