DENVER -- Beneath a gleaming white roof sculpted with a fiberglass fabric to resemble the distant Rocky Mountains, custodians vacuum the carpets and clean the windows of the cavernous airport terminal.
Baggage is stacked at ticket counters and, outside three giant concourses, workers lug heavy equipment across the concrete.
It could be a typical scene at any busy terminal, except that a few essentials are missing here at Denver International Airport. There are no planes in the air or on the ground. No pilots. No ticket takers. No passengers.
Plagued by construction problems and a high-tech baggage handling system that ripped apart suitcases with the ferocity of a grizzly bear, Denver International -- the country's first new major airport since Dallas-Fort Worth opened two decades ago -- has been stuck in a holding pattern ever since its debut was postponed a year ago.
What made the initial delay particularly embarrassing was that 3,800 political, social and business leaders -- including one of the airport's biggest boosters, former Denver mayor and now-Clinton Transportation Secretary Federico F. Pena -- had celebrated the scheduled opening with a black-tie gala just before the opening was called off.
Revised opening dates have passed with such regularity that DIA, as the airport is known locally, has come to mean "Delayed It Again" to its detractors. Denver's Stapleton International, meanwhile, continues to serve air traffic to and from the region.
Officially, the new facility is now set to open Feb. 28, although sources close to the airport say that operations are not likely to commence before mid-April.
Regardless, even early supporters have soured on the city-owned project, which was touted as the key to transforming this metropolitan area of 1.8 million people into an Athens of the Great Plains.
"It's a joke," said Jane Mangus, who works in a clothing store in downtown Denver some 27 miles from the new airport terminal. "We're the laughingstock of the country."
It's no laughing matter to the city's money managers, who said it costs $1.1 million each day the airport remains closed.
And Denver's auditors told The Sun that, in addition to about $4.7 billion in land and construction costs, heavy bond debt has brought the total price to nearly $10 billion -- more than 20 times the city's annual operating budget.
Airport officials, harried by negative and, they claim, mostly inaccurate news accounts about the airport's condition, insist that once it is open for business, Denver International will pay for itself and impress air travelers from around the world.
Visitors are reminded that when Denver Municipal Airport -- named for another Denver mayor, Benjamin F. Stapleton -- opened in 1929, its critics called the facility a waste of money and dubbed it "Stapleton's Folly."
Critics of the new facility counter that passengers, who ultimately will foot the high rental and user fees charged to the airlines, will discover Denver International to be the most expensive airport in the country.
Optimistic groundbreaking
When dignitaries broke ground in 1990, Denver International was supposed to cost under $2 billion. A $500 million federal grant got the project moving, and the city sold bonds to finance construction. But major changes in building designs and baggage systems, coupled with cost overruns and alleged mismanagement, have sent the price soaring.
To keep pace with rising costs, Denver has been forced to go to the bond market a half-dozen times.
The latest sale, in September, brought in $257 million. It also raised questions about Denver's reliance on the high-interest bond market to pay for an airport that hasn't earned the city a dime. Out of necessity, about three-quarters of the revenue from the fall sale is earmarked to pay off interest due on previous bond sales, according to Beth Machann, a city auditor.
Money is not the only issue troubling Denver International.
While contractual employees keep the place spotless and crews repair cracks in the concrete, Colorado and federal authorities are conducting 10 separate investigations into alleged construction and funding improprieties.
All this is to be expected, said Charles J. "Chuck" Cannon, a former wire service reporter who is Denver International's public affairs manager.
"We're the biggest public works project in the country, and we're the first major airport in the country in 20 years," he said. "We're probably going to be the model on which future airports are built. You can't build something like this without attracting interest. And when you attract interest, you attract controversy."
No one doubts that the new airport will open someday, replacing Stapleton, which city officials had decided was too small to handle increased traffic. Despite a recent poll by a local newspaper that showed that most area residents would oppose building the airport today, the facility is a fait accompli.
Aside from its distinctive terminal roof, which is supported by 34 steel "masts" that give it the mountaintop look, the airport is most notable for its size. The airport land area is 53 square miles -- twice the size of Manhattan Island. Subways connect the three unattached concourses to the main terminal, and a passenger bridge links the terminal only to the closest concourse and the airport administration offices.
The Federal Aviation Administration built a 33-story control tower, the tallest in North America. And the airport
commissioned nearly $7 million in art to decorate the buildings.
Short of rejoicing with every new delay and problem, a small band of hard-nosed critics said it has found vindication in the airport's plight because it tried to warn of the pitfalls of such a major undertaking.
Backed by a coalition of entrepreneurs and politicians who promised that a new airport would rocket Denver out of an economic slump, residents of the city and of Adams County, where the project was proposed, approved a referendum on the project in 1989 by a 2-to-1 ratio.
Airport critics admit that they were disorganized and outspent at the time of the ballot question. And, said one of the opposition leaders, the pro-airport forces made them out to be pariahs in a Denver eager for jobs and status among the competitive Western states.
"They made anyone who opposed it sound disloyal," said William B. Chenoweth, a Colorado native who helped lead the push against the project.
Then-Mayor Pena led the charge for a new airport. When he unexpectedly joined the Clinton administration as head of the Transportation Department, city auditor Wellington E. Webb ran for and won the mayor's seat. He has been a booster ever since.
Peter Boyles, a radio talk-show host who keeps the airport controversy alive on Denver's KTLK radio, said that old-fashioned greed motivated support for the newfangled airport.
After the 1989 referendum loss, Mr. Chenoweth and many others in the opposition gave up an active role in the fight. Quickly -- some say too quickly -- the airport began to take shape in the midst of wheat farms northeast of Denver.
At the height of construction activity, 10,000 workers were on the site. More than 100 million cubic yards of earth were moved to accommodate runways, underground tunnels, concourses and the 376,332-square-foot terminal.
All this time, staunch airport critics such as Dr. Paul E. Earle and G. B. "Jim" Buck, both in their late 70s and with backgrounds in science and engineering, continued the sniping.
The men, whom Mr. Boyles nick named "Batman and Robin," collected thousands of documents, hired pilots to fly them over the construction site and badgered airport officials relentlessly.
The Earle-Buck duo mainly picked at technical aspects of the airport. For example, they said the soil at Denver International is expansive, meaning that it periodically shifts and that unless preparations are made, concrete slabs can rise or fall several inches. All the while, the men made their findings available to the press.
Airport officials insist that the 17-inch-thick runways are in good shape. Cracks discovered last summer in the concrete were superficial and, Mr. Cannon said, were quickly repaired.
The baggage debacle
One of the biggest and most embarrassing snafus to hit the airport was the initial failure of its baggage handling system, an -- automated prototype designed to deliver luggage at a claims site by the time passengers arrived.
The $200 million system was flawed. It tore apart bags and threw them out of speeding carts. BAE Automated Systems of Dallas, which designed the system to replace the conventional conveyor-belt mechanism used at most airports, has been solving the problems, said Mr. Cannon.
Airport critics were joined by Michael J. Boyd, president of Aviation Systems Research Corp., a Golden, Colo., independent firm that prepares air traffic predictions, who unleashed some of the harshest criticism of the new airport.
"In private industry, DIA would be the product of a con operation and labeled as such," Mr. Boyd wrote in his quarterly publication. "In coming years, DIA will be used as an example of how politicians and special interests join forces to benefit at the public's expense."
Effects on Baltimore?
Mr. Boyd predicted that United Airlines, Denver International's major carrier, will be unable to afford the cost of operating out of the new facility. If United demands lower rates and the city gives in, Mr. Boyd said, bond holders could face cuts in interest rates.
"If these bonds take a tumble, airport bonds at Baltimore-Washington International and other places aren't going to be as cheap as they could be," he said. "It's an economic Chernobyl. The fallout will hit airports all around the country."
In one case, some visitors to Denver already are paying more for airport-related services. Car rental companies at Stapleton are adding nearly $3 a day to the normal fee to help defray the cost of their $65 million motor pool and office complex at the new airport.
And Denver International's vendors, who readied their shops a year ago but have no customers, have been authorized to charge higher prices for their goods when the airport finally opens.
If airport officials didn't have enough trouble dealing with reports of flying baggage, cracked runways, cost overruns and federal investigations, a former construction inspector named Dean Hill alleged recently that he was asked to look the other way when he witnessed faulty construction practices.
Airport officials now say that Mr. Hill was mistaken. They said documents and, in one case, a radiograph taken of a support wall that Mr. Hill said was built without required reinforcement, prove that the structures were built properly.
Still, stories about the airport continue to keep the public affairs staff busy, said Mr. Cannon.
"I come in here some days and want to pull my hair out," he said. "We want to clear up the problem in the public's mind. I personally don't give a damn what Paul Earle thinks or Jim Buck or Michael Boyd or the rest of them, because they don't like the project. Never have and never will."
Such sentiments don't bother Dr. Earle, who said city officials described him as a "flake" when he first raised questions about the airport.
"I at least have the satisfaction of having unraveled what the problems would be," he said. "We were right."