Colorado Springs’ fourth City for Champions project – the city’s proposed World War II aviation museum downtown – isn’t going to happen, Mayor John Suthers told the City Council during a luncheon meeting Tuesday.

An essential piece of state legislation got shelved Thursday, killing hopes that Regional Tourism Act money could go to the downtown aviation museum.

The city originally wanted to create a downtown stadium and events center as one of the projects. But when a study showed in February that the center wasn’t economically feasible, operators of the National Museum of World War II Aviation offered to expand their museum at the Colorado Springs Airport into southwest downtown to become that fourth City for Champions project.

Most of the museum – a vast collection of World War II aircraft – would have remained at the airport. Now the expansion to downtown appears doomed. But the museum has a 21-acre campus at the airport and will expand there instead, said Mark Earle, a museum board member and project manager.

In December 2013, the state Economic Development Commission had earmarked $120.5 million in state sales tax revenue over 30 years to help pay for the downtown stadium, the planned U.S. Olympic Museum, an Air Force Academy visitors center, and a sports medicine and performance center at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

But the commission this year unanimously opposed a bill that would have allowed amendments to city applications, which Colorado Springs would have needed to swap out the downtown stadium for the aviation museum, Suthers said.

SB 248 died Thursday when the Senate Committee on Appropriations postponed it indefinitely.

“Unless something miraculous happens,” the mayor said, “we will not be pursuing a fourth component” to City for Champions.

Doug Price, president and CEO of the Convention & Visitors Bureau, was more optimistic.

“We have five years, till December 2018, to make progress on these projects,” Price said. “It’s apparent they’re not going to approve anything that doesn’t resemble what was in the original application. But the clock continues to tick. I don’t have anything on the horizon, but we still do have time on our side.”

The aviation museum operators envisioned an 86,000-square-foot aviation hall with a museum, education center and event space.

Museum President Bill Klaers could not be reached for comment Tuesday. In February, though, he had said the John E. and Margaret L. Lane Foundation of Colorado Springs was willing to provide 4 acres southwest of Cimarron and Sahwatch streets for the museum.

The museum could have complemented the Olympic Museum and Hall of Fame, also set to be built in southwest downtown.

“I would have loved to have a fourth component,” Suthers said of the City for Champions. “I’m disappointed but not real surprised.”