Samuel Johnson had James Boswell. Jumbo the Elephant had P.T. Barnum. Muhammad Ali and Madonna had, well, themselves. Great and tireless promoters, all.
Denver? Well, for 35 years we have had Rich Grant. As communications director and all-around drum-beater for Visit Denver, which champions all things Mile High, Grant has been our point man to the world.
At December’s end he is retiring, boxing up his memorabilia-packed office at 1555 California St. Off to a life of travel, reading and beer-drinking, which truth to tell is the life he has led all along, except for the 9-to-5 job as municipal cheerleader.
Grant figures he’s leaving at a propitious time. Denver is riding a high of travel-related grand openings, including the new Renaissance Denver Downtown City Center Hotel in the former Colorado National Bank Building, plus the launch of the refurbished Union Station.
Asked on a recent morning if his decision to depart was difficult, Grant paused.
“It was and it wasn’t,” he said. “It’s probably the same thing an athlete feels. The job becomes all-consuming, and at some point you can’t do it like that any more. But it’s been a great gig.”
There was a certain rightness to the numbers, too. “I’m retiring at 65, and I’ve worked at the same job for 35 years,” he said. “Not many people get to be a combined 100 on those numbers.”
Grant pooh-poohs any notion that he was a mover or a shaker. His job was to get the word out about policy, not make it.
“I’m kind of like Forrest Gump,” he said. “I wasn’t really responsible for anything, but I was in the room when it happened.”
Along the way he has witnessed major changes, among them the transformation of LoDo from a down-at-the-heels warehouse district to a thriving business and residential neighborhood; the rise of beer tourism; the arrival of Coors Field and the Pepsi Center; the opening of the Denver Art Museum’s Hamilton wing; vibrant infill along the South Platte River; plus Denver Restaurant Week, the nation’s largest.
There was also the Summit of the Eight, the G8 political-economic meeting of June 1997, and the Democratic National Convention of 2008. “I call that B.C. and A.D.,” Grant said. “Before the convention and after the Democrats. Before that, a lot of people didn’t really know a thing about Denver.”
But Grant has no doubt about the biggest event that happened on his watch — or in the city’s history.
“It has to be the opening of Denver International Airport in 1995,” he said. “It was kind of like our Promontory Summit.” That reference to the driving of the Golden Spike that united the Union and Pacific railroads in Utah in 1869 suggests something of the project’s scale.
“DIA was wildly controversial,” Grant said. “It was a blood sport. Lifelong friendships were broken. I remember the groundbreaking. It took us 90 minutes to get there on dirt roads over the open prairie. We knew it was going to be the biggest construction project underway in the world at the time, and that we’d have to move twice the dirt of the Panama Canal.
“It was a huge gamble but it paid off.”
Grant grew up just north of New York City in the small town of Hastings-on-Hudson. The son of an artist father and a librarian mother, he has one brother, a noted illustrator.
He graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1971 with degrees in advertising and psychology. He took a full swig of the ’60s, attending Woodstock and the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam in Washington, D.C.
“A day without being tear-gassed was a day wasted,” he said.
Grant moved here in 1973. “Four hippies in a VW Bug,” he said. “Everyone’s worst nightmare.”
He kicked around for a bit, including a stint as a freelance writer. In 1979 he was hired by the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which morphed into Visit Denver five years ago.
“In the old days it was like ‘Mad Men,’ ” he said. “I had to hand-type all the press releases before sending them out. It wasn’t news unless the reporters could hold them up to the light and see the keystroke through the paper.”
There were also the three-hour business lunches at the old Scotch & Sirloin restaurant.
Along the way, Grant earned enormous respect — and affection — from travel professionals.
“The secret of his success is that he is so genuine in his passion for Denver,” said Joan Christensen of JC Communications in Denver. “When you love what you do, it shows. And that is the key.
“He deserved a lot of credit for Denver’s enviable position as a top-ranked city for visitors.”
Walter Isenberg, CEO of Sage Hospitality Group, agreed.
“In many ways Rich put Denver on the world map,” Isenberg said. “He helped create a world reputation for the city. We owe him a tremendous debt.”
Grant will not lack for things to do in retirement.
An avid traveler and photographer, he heads to Belgium in June for the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. He is also a Civil War buff, and plans to add to his checklist of related historic sites he’s visited. (He draws the line at being a re-enactor. “If I wanted to put on a wool suit and get yelled at, I’d just come to work,” he said.)
He will catch up on his reading, though that might be relative. Grant figures he has a dozen books going at any one time.
And there is his passion for beer.
Not in the Homer-Simpson-at-Moe’s-Bar kind of way, though he would probably happily down a can of Duff, but as a true connoisseur of craft beer. Listen to him rhapsodize on the subject — “No beer in the world approaches a good cask-conditioned ale” — and if it wasn’t for the cottony mane on his head, you might mistake his white goatee for beer foam.
He lives in a Washington Park bungalow with his “fianceé of 32 years,” Pat Trahey, the retired editor of Colorado Outdoors magazine.
Grant calculates that a city needs three things to separate itself from the pack: great public buildings, a vibrant collection of restaurants and shops; plus a happening downtown with a large residential element.
Denver has that, plus its much-touted 300-plus days of sunshine each year. “It’s a real city but it’s a small town,” he said.
Grant is unsure of how big a game-changer the new laws on recreational marijuana will prove to be.
“It could be just another thing people come out here for, like horseback riding, river running and craft beer,” he said. “It might be more of a novelty, though it got us a lot of press.”
Two or three times a week, Grant squires out-of-towners around his city. Most are travel writers. He is struck by their reactions.
“In their eyes, Denver is emerging as a really sophisticated city dedicated to sustainability and the outdoors,” he said. “It’s strange how international writers think Denver is so European. They see the outdoor cafes, flowers everywhere, pedestrian zones, the architecture and bicycles everywhere.”
Soon, Grant will get to enjoy all that as a regular Denver citizen. He laughed about his plans.
“I guess there’s a beer in my future.”
William Porter: 303-954-1877, wporter@denverpost.com or twitter.com/williamporterdp
