Dispute lingers between Estes Park Chamber, town

ESTES PARK – Both the Estes Park Chamber of Commerce and the town of Estes Park are moving forward in the face of a lingering dispute between the two organizations over who should provide visitor and convention bureau services.

In November, the chamber moved out of a town-owned visitors center facility, which the chamber had called home for decades. The town has since moved its Estes Park Convention and Visitors Bureau into the visitors center at 500 Big Thompson Ave.

The chamber has taken up residence in offices above the Starbucks coffee shop at 356 E. Elkhorn Ave. and is positioning itself to face the future with beefed up member services, said chamber president David Crockett.

“What we’re attempting to do is bring in more member services, so there will be member-to-member benefits and chamber-to-member benefits,” Crockett said.

The Estes Park CVB – formed in 2003 by the Estes Park Town Board of Trustees – now answers the Estes Park tourism number and has its own Web site – www.estesparkcvb.com – up and running. In addition, plans are under consideration for construction of a new, $1.5 million visitors center.

“The convention and visitors bureau focuses purely on the visitors,´ said Tom Pickering, director of business development for the town and executive director of the CVB. “Our job is to get our name out in front of those visitors and get those visitors to respond for information on coming to Estes Park. When they show up here we make sure we are at the visitors center to give them information, give them directions and assist them in any way we can.”

The rift between the two entities expanded dramatically in 2003 when the town moved to terminate a long-running lease agreement with the chamber. For 50-some years the chamber occupied the visitors center for annual rent of $1 and answered tourist’s phone calls seeking information and lodging reservations in the mountain town. In exchange, the town paid the chamber to answer these calls at the rate of $2 per call – worth about $40,000 annually to the chamber.

When the town opted to have its own staff occupy the visitors center in the form of a new convention and visitors bureau and push the chamber out, the chamber cried foul. As a result, the chamber brought a multi-faceted lawsuit against the town and refused to move.

In October 2004 a judge resolved the first point in the suit – regarding the chamber’s right to remain in the visitors center. The judge denied the chamber’s request for a permanent injunction against the town based on review of the lease between the two.

Still, two points remain to be resolved in the chamber’s lawsuit against the town. Ted Williams, chairman of the chamber’s government affairs committee, said the chamber has requested a declaratory judgment in the case and expects that to come by mid June.

The remaining issues are the chamber’s allegations that the town does not have the legal ability to form and operate a convention and visitors bureau and that membership fees charged by the Estes CVB to businesses located outside the town limits are a tax, not a voluntary fee, and are therefore also illegal.

The chamber contends, Williams said, that a statutory town such as Estes cannot set aside tax dollars, create an enterprise, develop and sell a product. Furthermore, by charging businesses outside town limits a fee for business leads the town is violating the state’s TABOR Amendment. The amendment does not allow the implementation of taxes without a vote.

The town’s position, meanwhile, is that formation of the Estes Park Convention and Visitors Bureau was perfectly legal, said Greg White, attorney for the town of Estes Park. “We have the authority to do it, we have the authority to operate it, which we’re doing right now, and the ability to charge fees to out-of-town businesses.”

At the heart of the dispute is the question of who should do what in a town dependent on tourist dollars for survival.

“We’re a tourist town, we don’t have industry,” Williams said. “We just have businesses here that market their products to tourists, whether that’s hotel rooms, T-shirts or a hat … We have tourism; that’s what we do.”

Marketing the town to tourists has long been the job of the chamber and Williams said the chamber believes it should continue in that role, while the town should be responsible for ensuring that quality infrastructure is in place.

“The town is going to have to recognize that people don’t come here to visit town hall. They come her to see the guy selling T-shirts and Rocky Mountain National Park,” Williams said. “We’re in the entertainment business,” he said of tourism businesses in Estes Park. “They’re not. They’re in the keep-the-streets-clean-and-do-something-about-the-parking-and-do-something-about-the-traffic business.”

The town, not surprisingly, sees it differently. The CVB’s Pickering said a consultant hired by the town to review its marketing practices pointed out the need for a strong chamber of commerce to serve businesses. “What they said was we’re desperate for a chamber of commerce because we have so many small businesses in this community that need assistance from a chamber,” Pickering said.

“That’s what a chamber of commerce does. The town board said ‘we’ll answer our own phones and you, the chamber of commerce, need to become the most powerful chamber of commerce we can have assisting the small business of the community.’ ”

The conflict between the two entities has been a catalyst for change at the chamber, Williams said. The organization – which lost the revenue from answering the phone calls – has downsized, reorganized and modified its operations. “We have gone in and modified some of the bylaws and created mission statements for ourselves and a vision for where the chamber of commerce is going.”

on Facebook on LinkedIn