Fort Collins DDA won’t pick up events previously managed by DBA

FORT COLLINS — The Downtown Development Authority in Fort Collins will not pick up the event-management function of the now-disbanded Downtown Business Association.

Matt Robenalt, executive director of the DDA, told BizWest Friday that the authority’s board was clear when it decided not to get into the event business after the DBA folded. 

“In the 40 years we’ve been around, we have not worked within a model of producing events,” Robenalt said. “Events are a different skill set.”

The DDA board did agree to take over some marketing functions from the DBA during the pandemic when the DBA did not have event revenue to support those marketing and promotion functions. 

He explained that the DBA had a budget of $1.1 million and its business marketing and promotion program consumed about $320,000 of that. It had to run events in order to finance the marketing function.

Robenalt said that managing large events has become very expensive for organizations because of liability-insurance costs and other considerations. He was not certain if any organizations in the community will pick up what the DBA will no longer manage. 

“There’s a lot of misperception about the number of events that the DBA managed,” he said. The Downtown Development Authority licenses events held in Old Town Square downtown. About 125 to 130 events are held there each year, Robenalt said. Only nine or 10 of those were DBA events, he said.

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