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Questions Surround Mysterious Tent In Downtown

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Aug 18, 2008 5:07 pm US/Mountain

Questions Surround Mysterious Tent In Downtown

Reporting
Terry Jessup
DENVER (CBS4) ― There are white tents popping up all over downtown Denver and not all of them are there for the Democratic National Convention.

Most of the big tents are actually the media tents at the Pepsi Center. There will be 13,000 to 14,000 from the media, some of them working outside. But there is another tent downtown that is drawing a lot of curiosity and it has nothing to do with the so-called tent city being set up for convention protestors.

"My boss is like that. He says, 'I have this great idea, let's do this!' And we're all uhhhhhh," said Sean Miller, who works for Wright Group Event Services, the company setting up the mysterious tent.

The idea Miller referred to is a 120-foot long, 60-foot high tent that has people wondering why it's there.

"I thought it was an eyesore, I thought, what are they thinking?" a woman said.

"I assume it has a function for the convention, and then it will disappear?" another woman said.

"I thought they were holding a convention there, and that it would be down in about a week," a man said.

Actually, it wasn't set up for the convention. It's been up a couple of months now to be rented out to host downtown events for anything.

"Anything you can do, we can pretty much figure out a way to do it in here; concerts, weddings, banquets," Miller said.

Before the tent, the block at 15th and California was not exactly one of downtown's gems. In fact it was considered blighted and area businesses say the tent is welcome for now.

"I think it will be a good thing to have here since it was an empty parking lot before," said a woman working in the area.

"Anything that draws people to the area is good right now," another said.

The tent's developers are well aware of the convention-related rumors. They say they've even been accused of being a front for the world's largest homeless shelter.

What will really be taking place inside the tent, at least for the next week, is still being closely guarded.

"I understand there's some kind of top-secret DNC stuff going on. The Hyatt's got it rented for a couple days here at DNC and I've been told some of the people coming in here that I can't repeat, so yeah, it'll be busy," Allen Wollard with Wright Group Event Services said.

One of the rumors circulating is that this tent may be used one night next week for a private Black-Eyed Peas concert.

The lot where the tent sits will eventually be a retail and housing development, but that's a couple of years away. The Wright Group says the plan is to keep it up until the high-rise project gets underway.

The tent and gear together is worth about $1 million. The owners say it can seat up to 1,500 people.

Additional Resources

• For complete coverage of the planning for the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver, as well as information about how to volunteer and for a list of helpful links, visit the Democratic National Convention section.

(© MMIX CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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