Council discusses utilities executive agreement to make Peak Innovation Park "shovel ready" amid $165–168M utility proposal

Colorado Springs City Council members and city staff heard detailed briefings on a proposed executive agreement with Colorado Springs Utilities that officials say would make Peak Innovation Park ‘‘shovel ready’’ by funding major electrical infrastructure, including a substation the airport would finance.

The discussion matters because city and utilities officials said the utilities investment, together with an airport-financed substation, would remove a major obstacle for large industrial and aerospace employers to locate in the city and could accelerate projects that otherwise face multi‑year lead times.

Mike Frankel, Colorado Springs Utilities chief customer officer, described the utilities’ role and timeline. “Essentially, what it does is it allows the site to be shovel ready,” he said, adding that utilities has proposed about $168,000,000 to provide needed transmission and that the airport’s substation would be about $58,000,000. Frankel said long lead times for substation transformers are typically “about 4 and a half to 5 year lead time,” and that prebuilding…