Avoiding the house chores is serious business. Making busy work for myself I took the time to scratch one item off my fun to-do-list - check GOP candidate for Senate's Cory Gardners' Open Secrets campaign donation listing.
#14 - The Broe Companies
Who? That can't be real. It sounds like a bowling team of junior Coors executives.
Oh, but as Google tells us, they are very, very real.
Believing you only start to know a person or company when you get to the 4th or 5th page of Google results, I found this on the top of the 4th page, from 2006, he's #23 on ColoradoBiz's list of the state's most powerful people (thanks to Free Library for link). The write-up? Like catnip for the kitty, I am drawn to the flame.
Pat Broe is one of the state's invisible power people, really the first to make this list. He's not rich enough to be listed on the Forbes 400, and his company, The Broe Cos. Inc., is no Fortune 500 employer. Yet when you look into Broe, and catch him lunching with the governor, or launching a manufacturing plant in Northern Colorado while a statewide recession rages around him, you have to conclude there's more to the man than he ever allows to go public. The Broe Cos., a private company, owns real estate, housing complexes for the elderly, railroads, energy producers and technology companies, which it invests in as a venture partner. Broe mostly makes his money on land deals, however, deals that sometimes also involve his short-line railroads--he is the largest owner of short-line rail in the U.S. and Canada--deals that often include, too, governments starving for industrial and commercial development in order to build their tax base. Broe is known as a tough negotiator in such deals. But don't expect to see his picture taken at the ribbon cutting. He doesn't often let that happen.
More links after the jump & special alert for railroad activists.
Train peeps - heads up! Found this story dated 2 days ago regarding The Brownsville Rio Grande International Railway being sold out to this company for what sounds like a really lousy deal:
Ultimately, it will be up the The Port Of Brownsville to approve the granting of the franchise of the railroad to Broe. If they do, the handing of control of the entire railroad complex would be left up to Broe, who would decide how it was operated, and even to set its rates.
Not my strongest period of history, but didn't we settle this whole railroad monopoly business in late 1800's? Did I miss a meeting? I know there are some folks here that are way more knowledgeable about the rail business so I hope they will respond below and give a better perspective.
Detailing a "rare public appearance," from Northern Colorado Business Report, while discussing OmniTRAX, "one of the largest privately held railroad companies in North America," comes this charming bit of busines. What's that about, I'll know you by your friends?
As the oil and gas boom has grown in Weld County, rail has become an increasingly important part of Broe's business, attracting companies such as Halliburton, which built a sand terminal in the Great Western Industrial Park, also owned by The Broe Group, and which uses the Great Western Railway to transport its sand to various customers.
Here's another Page 3 gem,
#22 on The Richest's list of Top Landowners In America.
This is the same company that was just awarded a 62-year contract to run The Port Of Chicago.
So why am I posting these links and inviting you, yes YOU, to search and share more information about this Broe dude?
Because every time Cory Gardner starts speechifying about how he works for and understands the independent and small scale farmer or rancher or hunter of my great state of Colorado, I want us all to be able to point out who he really stands for & invites to his table.
We're all in this together and together we can get loud.
Edited to add: Mark Udall For Colorado