Beyond the glitz and grit and the commercials clamoring for attention, one certainty about this weekend’s Superbowl is that the fans of one team will be left to pin their hopes on another season.

By contrast, the three of us, like thousands of others in Colorado and beyond, are still riding high with the success of this year’s National Western Stock Show and the momentum generated in redeveloping land the Stock Show has called home throughout its 117-year history. Against a host of social, political, and technological changes, we see the Stock Show and the redevelopment of the National Western Center as emblems of hope demonstrating how we might redefine the relationship between rural and urban while seeking solutions to benefit all of us.

This past month, the National Western Stock Show welcomed more than 700,000 visitors for the event, a 16-day celebration of rural life that combines the spectacle of rodeos, concerts, and line dances with the livestock displays, discussions, and auctions that have long been a staple of rural livelihoods.

The show takes place on an expanse of arenas, barns, and stock pens in north Denver that was shaped in decades past by the presence of multiple rail lines and proximity to the state’s growing urban center. In 1906, the Stock Show’s first year, Colorado had only 700,000 residents, and they were split evenly between rural and urban areas, a balance that held steady over the next three decades as the state steadily grew.

Over the show’s history, the grounds of what is now the National Western Center changed slowly, even as the state’s urban population, concentrated in Denver and neighboring communities, surged from the 1940s onward. Of close to 6 million people now living in Colorado, about 13% live in rural areas, while more than half live in Denver and the surrounding, increasingly metropolitan, counties.

This year, Stock Show regulars found much that was familiar, from competitive bull riding and horse jumping to 4H showings and sheep shearing demonstrations.

And on land that once offered parking and tie-out space for cattle, thousands encountered the three, gleaming new buildings of the CSU Spur campus, the leading edge of the National Western Center redevelopment project aimed at attracting visitors year-round.

On Jan. 6, the day before the Stock Show opened, the CSU System opened Hydro, the third and final of the public-facing, research- and education-focused buildings making up a campus designed to engage learners of all ages in problem-solving related to critical issues of water conservation, food production, and human and animal health. Later the same day, across an intersection busy with pre-stock show traffic, the National Western Stock Show broke ground on the Legacy building, which will serve as its new headquarters.

All of this on the heels of the December groundbreaking of the new 350,000 sq. ft. Sue Anschutz-Rogers Livestock Center, which during Stock Show will host livestock events, and which will host community events, concerts, exhibitions, sporting events, trade shows, and banquets the other 11 months of the year. The Livestock Center will be the largest – and likely the most versatile – building on campus thus far.

In coming years, the National Western Center will see other changes and will be enlivened year-round with farmers’ markets, conferences, and other events. These changes reflect the foresight of Colorado leaders who sought to keep the Stock Show in Denver, lawmakers who in 2015 provided funding for the CSU Spur campus construction to bring exploratory education to the public, and Denver voters, who in 2015 approved Question 2C by a large majority, extending a city tax on lodgers to support the National Western Center redevelopment. Ultimately, the Stock Show and the site itself call our attention to the relationship between urban and rural communities, the responsibilities we have to each other, and our absolute interdependence.

We know the Stock Show and the new National Western Center are changing, and that this is a way to bridge gaps that often seem wider outside the magical 16 days we experience each January in Denver. By continuing this work, and by building on the commonalities and strengths shared by rural and urban communities alike, our city, state, and the region can look forward to good times, happy memories, and convergence of interests with each Stock Show ahead.

Paul Andrews is the president and CEO of the National Western Stock Show. Brad Buchanan is CEO of the National Western Center. Tony Frank is the chancellor of the Colorado State University System.

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