Loveland may revive downtown advocacy group

LOVELAND – Loveland officials are working on plans to revive a downtown partnership that will promote the area through management, marketing and advocacy, reviving an agency that was disbanded in the late 1990s.

Talks on establishing the partnership are preliminary, but the idea will be going to a city council work session in December. The partnership would include downtown property owners, representatives from the city and community organizations, as well as those with business interests in other parts of the city.

Loveland Mayor Cecil Gutierrez and others say such a dedicated group is necessary to help the historic downtown compete against outlying shopping areas and the vibrant downtowns in nearby cities.

“Like a shopping center has a property manager, it has to be an organization that brings focus every day,” Gutierrez said.

The health of downtown is important to more than just those with property downtown, according to Mike Scholl, economic development manager for the city of Loveland. Having a strong downtown makes doing business elsewhere in the city easier, and is a draw for new residents who will spend disposable income at various stores citywide, even stretching out as far as the Centerra mixed-use development, Scholl said.

The downtown partnership would be different from a downtown development authority, Scholl said, because DDAs are focused on redevelopment. DDAs are able to use tax increment financing to incentivize redevelopment of aging properties.

The downtown partnership would promote downtown and its businesses through marketing and events, he said. The partnership also could include a business improvement district, which would do marketing and advocacy, but also could issue municipal bonds for economic development.

Business improvement districts are quasi-municipal organizations contained within boundaries established by city council ordinance. The districts are formed by approval of property owners representing 50 percent of acreage and 50 percent of property value of the proposed district. They are financed through a mill levy assessed on commercial property and approved by a vote of businesses within the district, according to Denver-based redevelopment specialists Progressive Urban Management Associates.

Downtown Loveland has struggled in recent years, through the recession and the construction of Centerra, a mammoth shopping center at Interstate 25 and U.S. Highway 34, which has drawn retail dollars from Loveland as well as Fort Collins, Greeley and all the towns in between.

Some new businesses have opened in downtown Loveland since the recovery began, including two breweries and Next Door restaurant, adjacent to the recently renovated Rialto Theatre Center. Earlier this year, Madwire Media announced that it would expand into the office space above the Rialto, located on Fourth Street, known as the “Main Street” of downtown.

Sales tax collections are up by 9.5 percent in the downtown area as a result, according to city records. In October, downtown Loveland saw $946,901 in sales tax collections, compared with $846,895 in October 2012.

But even with this development, as well as some downtown multi-family housing, downtown Loveland is quiet compared with the bustle of other downtowns in the region. Downtowns in Fort Collins and Greeley are seeing ever-higher levels of activity following the recession.

The last time a downtown organization was created in Loveland proved beneficial for the businesses there, according to Felicia Harmon, a Loveland-based revitalization consultant and former director of the Loveland DDA.

Harmon served as the second director of the DDA after it was established in the late 1970s. The DDA’s first directive was to improve physical infrastructure, Harmon said. That task had been completed by the time she arrived in 1984, and it was her job to fix the area’s vacancy rate.

In the 10 years that Harmon was in charge of the DDA, the vacancy rate in downtown Loveland dropped from 30 percent to 7 percent, Harmon said. The current vacancy rate downtown is not tracked by the city, Scholl said.

The DDA was dissolved in the late 1990s when the property owners voted to do away with it, Scholl said. Even though the DDA had done good work, the city wasn’t “there yet” in terms of needing an organization to manage the downtown area, he said.

One of the challenges for the DDA was the boundary lines of the district, Harmon said.

“The lines were drawn very tightly around Fourth Street,” she said. “If the city is considering a downtown organization, they need to have broader boundaries, to allow for room to grow and bigger projects.”

Since the DDA dissolved, the city has managed some aspects of the downtown area, according to Gutierrez, including conducting retail analyses and handling parking, but the city can’t manage downtown as a dedicated organization would.

The city established in the early 2000s the downtown area as an urban renewal area, Scholl said, which has lent itself to some redevelopment, including the construction of Lincoln Place, a $9.3 million multi-family project built this year by Fort Collins-based Brinkman Partners.

If the downtown partnership and business improvement district are created, odds are good that a new DDA will be established at some point down the road, Scholl said, probably after the urban renewal area expires.

URAs have a life span of 25 years, as mandated by state statute. Often in downtown areas, when URAs expire, they are converted into DDAs, which can operate similar to urban renewal areas but are not managed by the city, Scholl said.

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