Businessman Steve Bigari had given up on Colorado Springs.

“I had thrown my hands up in the air and said, ‘These folks aren’t going to get it.’”

Bigari, CEO of Stellar Restaurant Solutions, a growing Springs-based call center that handles go-to orders for restaurants, was seriously thinking about moving his corporate headquarters – and the accompanying jobs – to Phoenix or Dallas.

How serious? He put in an offer on a building in Arizona.

Then he met Steve Bach.

The chance meeting happened more than a year ago when Bach, then a candidate for mayor, was headed to a campaign event at Bigari’s Mr. Biggs Family Fun Center. Bigari said the staff at Mr. Biggs ushered Bach in through a secret door at the adjacent call center to duck the crowd.

The call center intrigued Bach, said Bigari, who gave the future mayor a brief tour and then expressed his frustrations about doing business in the city.

“I want people to act like we matter,” Bigari told Bach. “I want the city to support us, help us remove obstacles.”

“That’s exactly the environment I’m going to create,” promised Bach, whose campaign centerpiece was jobs, jobs, jobs.

“I’m going to create the most business friendly environment of any city in America.”

Bach’s pledge to improve the business climate to help improve the local economy was among the reasons he won the election in a landslide, becoming the city’s first strong mayor.

As Bach approaches his first year in office, business owners and other observers say he kept his word.

Still, the unemployment rate for the Colorado Springs area has been static at about 9 percent for the past year. Last month, more than 28,000 people were still looking for a job — and the numbers don’t include unemployed people who have given up looking.

“We have not gotten as much done there as I had hoped in my first year,” Bach said.

“We’re at a plateau. We have to figure out a way now how do we get going further,” he said, adding that he will continue to try to attract a major anchor downtown and that he’s also working on an incentive package to induce a major employer to move into the South Academy Boulevard corridor.

Bach said he had three priorities when he became mayor: jobs, transforming city government and building community, including highlighting the positives about Colorado Springs.

Bach said he’s spent about 70 percent of his time in the past year trying to reshape city government and only about 10 percent on jobs.

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“It’s kind of the opposite of what I expected coming in in terms of the time allocation,” he said.

Still, he said, the two issues are directly related.

“In order to really impact jobs, we have to improve the business climate. If we can improve the business climate, if we can become a business friendly and a citizen friendly city, then we can keep the businesses we have here now and attract others,” he said.

“Well, how do you do that? Well, it’s not as easy as having me say, ‘OK, we’re all going to be business friendly.’ It’s really started with changing the culture in city government, which is kind of philosophical. But my take on that is moving from … a regulatory-oriented organization … to one of a customer-driven service organization.”

Bach is leading by example.

“The mayor’s personal attention and care was definitely instrumental in us making the decision to remain in Colorado Springs,” said Rick Dawson, president and CEO of Bal Seal Engineering, Inc., a medical device manufacturer with about 40 employees in Colorado Springs and plans to add more than 200 more by 2014.

Dawson said Bal Seal, which expects to double its sales in the next five years, was expanding and considered another location, including Salt Lake City and Phoenix.

While Bal Seal received a $2 million incentive package with rebates and tax credits from the city, El Paso County and the state, Dawson said other factors contributed to his company’s decision to expand in Colorado Springs.

“As much as the economic incentives and stuff were all well and good, but business is done based upon relationships and commitments, and we felt comfortable that Colorado Springs, through Mayor Bach, was willing to provide the support that we were going to need to be able to grow going forward,” he said.

The incentive package was already in the works before Bach took office, but the election raised Colorado Springs to a higher level “because all of a sudden we had an even stronger support mechanism than we had previously,” Dawson said.

“We knew that we could call Mayor Bach, and on several occasions, he did become personally involved and supported us with calls on our behalf or with connecting us with the right individuals in order to resolve issues in the project,” he said.

Jon Stillman, Bal Seal’s project manager for the Colorado Springs expansion, said Bach made himself available.

“I don’t want to say things were slow, but he provided a little bit of lubrication that helped it move that much faster,” Stillman said. “We certainly had lots of support from everybody, but I think it helped us to get more quickly to the final result.”

Bach also became involved when Kinder Morgan announced it was buying El Paso Corp., which employs about 440 people in Colorado Springs. The purchase raised concerns that Kinder Morgan, which operates a regional office in Lakewood, would close El Paso’s downtown office.

But Kinder Morgan eventually decided to maintain a presence in Colorado Springs, and Bach was among the reasons why.

“We consider many factors when deciding where to locate a major regional office — including the local economy, transportation infrastructure, housing, educational systems and opportunities, and the cost of living,” Joe Hollier, a spokesman for Kinder Morgan, said in an email.

“Mayor Bach and his team were extremely proactive in their approach. They reached out to us early in the process, offered to assist with our analysis and made a very compelling case for the City of Colorado Springs,” he wrote. “The Mayor and his team presented the City in a very positive light, both currently and for the future. As a result, we felt comfortable retaining a major regional office and a significant presence in Colorado Springs.”

Bach said he acted as soon as he “got the intel” that a purchase was looming.

“I picked up the phone and called the CEO, introduced myself and offered to fly down to Houston,” he said.

Steve Cox, the mayor’s chief of economic vitality and innovation, said the mayor is in his element when he’s one-on-one with CEOs.

“I think that’s one of his strongest suits: His ability to connect with them and talk about our community and sell our community. Not sugarcoat our challenges but talk about the opportunities in this community going forward,” he said.

Bach is a demanding boss who puts in long hours, Cox said.

“He’s action-oriented, and he wants to get things done,” he said. “It’s refreshing. It’s almost like there’s a sense of urgency that we have a lot to do and a short time to get there, and let’s get it done.”

Bigari, the CEO of Stellar Restaurant Solutions, which plans to double its workforce to 500 this year, said there wasn’t “a great deal of alignment behind business” until Bach was elected.

“There hasn’t been somebody who has owned it and said, ‘Listen, we’re going to make this a priority.’ That’s probably the singular difference. Steve is making that his focus,” he said.

When Stellar needed to demolish part of Little Big Town at Mr. Biggs for the expansion, Bigari said the city didn’t put up any barriers.

“That really wasn’t a big deal. The city was very supportive and immediately approved the plan,” he said.

Cox said city employees are now of the mindset that every decision has an economic impact — positive or negative, depending on the decision.

“If the Fire Department is doing a fire inspection and they make a requirement that’s going to cost a business money, then they really need to make sure it’s the right thing and maybe they can help them solve their problem in a way that doesn’t cost more money,” he said.

Bach “inherited a culture which was focused on input, not outcome,” said developer Steve Schuck, a friend and advisor of Bach’s.

“Colorado Springs is incredibly fortunate that Steve Bach has accepted this responsibility to change in a dramatic fashion the way we approach things, which will maximize the likelihood of getting through this crisis successfully,” Schuck said.

When Bigari gave Bach a tour of his call center, he told him that some states, including Texas and Arizona, were “very agressive” in courting businesses.

“I think I used the quote on him that everybody from Texas, whoever calls me, they use a standard greeting. They say, ‘Texas is open for business,’” Bigari said. “Think about what that says. Everyone is aligned behind the fact that we’re going to make it easy for you to do business. That’s the whole approach.”

While Colorado Springs still has a long way to go, Bigari said the city is now offering a greater level of support.

“Now the full team is organized around that. The whole process is organized around that,” he said.

“I think now you can say that Colorado Springs is open for business.”

—Contact Daniel Chacón: 476-1623Twitter @danieljchaconFacebook Daniel Chacon