By CQ Staff

The Pepsi Center arena, the home of this week’s convention until the final night, has been leased by the Democrats for $6.5 million from a branch of the Sam Walton family, whose Wal-Mart Stores have been accused of warning employees of the danger of electing a Democratic president in November.

The 19,000-seat arena, built in 1999 on the edge of downtown Denver, is owned by E. Stanley Kroenke, a St. Louis real estate developer and investor whose wife, Ann, is a niece of the Wal-Mart founder and a billionaire in her own right. Kroenke has served on the Wal-Mart board and built a number of shopping centers anchored by Wal-Marts.

Wal-Mart has vigorously opposed unions in its stores, and this summer several labor organizations, including the AFL-CIO, complained to the Federal Election Commission that Wal-Mart executives had told thousands of department managers — hourly workers in the company — that if Democrats gain control of the White House along with the Capitol, they will enact a law, called the Employee Free Choice Act, that would make it easier for unions to organize their workers. Wal-Mart denied telling the managers how to vote, saying that it had only briefed them on the legislation and how it might affect the company.

The Pepsi Center doesn’t employ union workers, a fact that complicated Democratic Party leaders’ choice of the city for their convention. It didn’t help that Denver has only one unionized hotel, the Hyatt, which is being used as convention headquarters. A compromise at the Pepsi Center has allowed some unions — including the Teamsters, the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Denver Theatrical Stage Employees — to perform work in the arena.

Kroenke paid about $450 million in 2000 for the arena and the city’s basketball and hockey franchises, the Nuggets of the NBA and the Avalanche of the NHL. He bought them from Liberty Media Corp., a conglomerate run by cable television baron John C. Malone.

Malone owned the arena and the teams only for a few weeks, having acquired them when he took over another conglomerate called Ascent Entertainment, which had acquired the teams, built the arena and then begun to disintegrate. The city had given Ascent some subsidies, including a sales tax rebate and property tax exemption, but most of the construction was privately financed.

Kroenke won the bidding for the arena in 2000 and was willing to meet a city requirement that he promise to not move the teams from Denver for at least 25 years.

Kroenke and his wife are expected to be out of town during the convention. The couple has contributed regularly to Republican candidates and party committees in the past, though not so far this year. Kroenke has a penthouse apartment atop the arena, though a convention manager told Westword magazine during an arena walk-through that Kroenke wouldn’t be staying there while the Democrats were in town. Kroenke also has homes in Missouri and Malibu.