Hickenlooper Hires City Marketing Director

Hickenlooper created the position in order to "brand" the city and thus improve its economic development prospects. The goal is to fill empty office space, hotel rooms, restaurants and retailer shops with new companies, tourists, diners and shoppers

.At the zoo, Baier helped bring international attention for its popular polar bear cubs, Klondike and Snow. At the zoo she also helped create a new logo and zoo image. The mayor says she made the zoo the city's top destination.

The Mayor says one of Baier's first jobs will be to help put together an economic development summit within the next 60 days.

Baier's annual salary in her new post is $80,000.

Hickenlooper also hired former Mayor Wellington Webb's daughter, Stephanie O'Malley, as director of the city of Denver's department that oversees liquor licenses and other permits.

"This is where the rubber really hits the road so many times in terms of relationships between businesses and neighborhoods, between the pressures for development and the people's need to feel that they are protected," Hickenlooper says.

O'Malley, 41, will resign her position at the law office of Patton Boggs' Denver office. She was in the public policy group in the law practice. She will be paid $75,000 at her new post, likely a substantial pay cut from her private sector job.