Economy & Economic Development  December 12, 2014

Unified eco-devo effort falls short

As a new organization aims to unify economic development efforts for all of Northern Colorado, a similar effort that encompassed the Boulder Valley and beyond has quietly faded away.

The Northwest Denver Business Partnership’s board dissolved the organization in September after more than 18 months of trying to create a brand for the northwest metro region.

“Everybody (on the board) loved it,” former NDBP chief executive Mike Kosdrosky said in a phone interview. “They just didn’t feel there was urgency in the business community to make it happen.”

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Stretching from Interstate 70 to Longmont and from the foothills to Interstate 25, the NDBP had aimed to create a privately funded business advocacy group for the area that would work to influence public policy at all levels of government and present one unified brand and voice for the region. While economic development was one goal of the organization, it was not the main focus.

But if the aims of the organization sound somewhat muddled, in the end that was part of the problem as the NDBP struggled to add members fast enough amid questions about what role the organization would fill.

“I’m not sure we were able to get our message out the way we would have liked,” said Kosdrosky, who has accepted a position as executive director of the Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Authority.

The Northwest Denver Business Partnership formed out of what was once the Broomfield Economic Development Corp. When the city of Broomfield decided to take economic development in-house and cut its funding to the BEDC, the BEDC changed its name to the Northwest Denver Economic Development Partnership and opted for a more regional approach.

As the organization refined its focus, it changed its name once again earlier this year.

Multiple NDBP board members, including chairman Dave Marusiak of Colorado Business Bank and vice chair Don Misner of Jones Lang LaSalle, could not be reached for comment. But board member Mike Cienian of Hunter Douglas said the idea was one that was perhaps a little bit ahead of its time.

“We had all kinds of positive feedback saying this is just what the area needs,” Cienian said. “It just didn’t happen in time.”

Kosdrosky said the NDBP had about 50 members. He said it was hard to say how many would have been needed for the organization to thrive but that it would likely have taken a “couple hundred.”

In the meantime, the group had pitched a capital campaign in an attempt to raise $100,000 by the end of the year to stabilize the organization as it tried to grow. But Kosdrosky said the board decided to pull the plug instead.

For such an organization to work, he said, it needed buy-in and participation from C-level executives at the region’s biggest companies across all industries. But that never came to fruition to the extent needed.

“For regionalism to work, yes, the business community has to be behind it,” Kosdrosky said. “But you have to have some real champions to exert influence to make sure it happens. Short of that, it’s going to be a difficult effort.”

Kosdrosky said it was almost as though the area’s economy is so strong at the moment that not everyone was convinced such an organization was needed.

There also were lingering questions about how the NDBP would interact with and complement other area economic-development organizations and chambers of commerce.

Aaron DeJong, economic development director for the city of Louisville, said he was willing to work with the NDBP. But he also wasn’t sure it was totally necessary to have a sub-regional group.

Boulder Economic Council executive director Clif Harald said his organization and the NDBP had some overlap in membership, and figuring out how to work together was a topic of conversation for BEC membership at one point.

“The conclusion was that our regional needs were being met through the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.,” Harald said.

Still others weren’t sure how they fit in. Wendi Nafziger, interim president of the Longmont Area Economic Council, said that, like Boulder, the LAEC’s regional needs were being met by the Metro Denver EDC. But she also said the NDBP seemed to be focused primarily on the U.S. Highway 36 corridor.

“I think we felt that, No. 1, we’re not on the 36 corridor,” Nafziger said. “We felt like our organization was serving the Longmont area, and we didn’t need a second organization overlapping services.”

One of the NDBP’s goals had been to transcend such local agendas and boundaries to present a united business front with the goal of marketing the assets of the area as a whole without favoring specific communities. Individual businesses’ interests are more regional in their scope, after all, the NDBP’s organizers had said.

That line of thinking is the same type of message the Northern Colorado Economic Alliance – a group founded by Greeley auto dealer Scott Ehrlich and CEO Tom Gendron of Loveland-based Woodward Inc. – is trying to get across as it gets set to launch early next year. The NCEA’s arrival has been met with some resistance, though, most notably from the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp., which focuses on Larimer County. The NCEA could also overlap with the Upstate Economic Development Corp., which is focused on Weld County.

Looking back, Kosdrosky said, going into such an endeavor requires that all stakeholders are on the same page not just with the geographic scale involved but also with the scale of “what you want to influence, making sure you know the audience you’re trying to reach, understanding that a regional business organization has to be regional and have widespread support.”

If the NDBP’s idea really was merely ahead of its time, Kosdrosky said it’s one he hopes will circle back around in the northwest metro area even though he’s moved on.

“With all of the time and effort we put into it and committed and sincere people who did try to make a go of it, I hope it wasn’t in vain,” Kosdrosky said. “But it’s hard to say.”

Joshua Lindenstein can be reached at 303-630-1943, 970-416-7343 or jlindenstein@bizwestmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @joshlindenstein.

As a new organization aims to unify economic development efforts for all of Northern Colorado, a similar effort that encompassed the Boulder Valley and beyond has quietly faded away.

The Northwest Denver Business Partnership’s board dissolved the organization in September after more than 18 months of trying to create a brand for the northwest metro region.

“Everybody (on the board) loved it,” former NDBP chief executive Mike Kosdrosky said in a phone interview. “They just didn’t feel there was urgency in the business community to make it happen.”

Stretching from Interstate 70 to Longmont and from…

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