Franker resigns as Visit Estes Park CEO

ESTES PARK — Kara Franker, who left a tourism-promotion job in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, three years ago to become CEO of Visit Estes Park, will resign next month and return to Florida, she told her staff and Estes Park town trustees late Thursday.

Her resignation will be effective Sept. 6, just as the annual Longs Peak Scottish-Irish Festival, the town’s most-attended event of the year, gets underway.

“I have accepted a position as president and CEO of Visit Florida Keys and Key West,” she told Estes Park officials. “This is the right move for me and my family at this time.”

A selection committee had named Franker as the top candidate to direct the tourism agency, which has a $60 million annual budget compared with Visit Estes Park’s $9.7 million and promotes visitation throughout the long island chain that stretches from the mainland just south of Miami west-southwestward to Key West. The Monroe County Tourist Development Council voted July 30 to offer Franker the position, and she decided to resign from the Estes Park post after contract negotiations with the council proved successful.

In her letter to Estes Park officials, Franker wrote that “it has been such an honor and a privilege to serve the community in this role, and I hope you will look back on our time together as being productive. I know I will. I have learned so much from each of you and will take that along with me in my journey. Thank you for collaborating so diligently on our many ambitious feats over the last three years. I believe we have much to be proud of and I love Estes Park.”

Franker said Sean Jurgens, who chairs Visit Estes Park’s board of directors, will convene a meeting of the board at 2 p.m. next Thursday via Zoom to discuss the naming of an interim CEO and the recruitment of Franker’s permanent replacement.

“Additionally,” she said, “he has asked me if I would lead the annual joint board meeting to review the VEP operating plan with all governing bodies before I depart. I am happy to do so and will contact representatives from both the town and county to see if that is possible.”

Mayor Gary Hall, noting that Franker was hired to lead Visit Estes Park in 2021 after previous director Eric Lund was asked to resign over “personnel” issues that were not officially specified, told BizWest late Thursday that Franker “came into a really tough situation. VEP was kind of melting down. She not only righted the ship but improved it.”

Hall repeated that observation in his emailed response to Franker’s resignation letter.

“The organization ran into real struggles a few years ago, and you helped it evolve to a much better place,” Hall wrote, “and you’ve done so much to promote Estes and bring positive messaging at all times of year.

“You’ve worked through crises and times of peace, and been a steady, powerful, consistent force to move our marketing efforts forward. You’ve made more progress on the shoulder seasons in these years than in many years before. And you do it all with relentless positivism. You’ve brought modern tools to the fore and so many new ideas. You’ve built a staff of experts who share the same goals for Estes.

“Visit Florida Keys is lucky to get you as their CEO,” Hall wrote to Franker, “and I expect you’ll do much more good work for them, in a slightly more tropical spot than Estes.”

Since Franker took the helm at Visit Estes Park, the local marketing district for the tourism-dependent town at the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, in May 2021, she directed a successful campaign to increase the lodging tax to help pay for workforce housing and related child care, and guided the move and expansion of the quirky Frozen Dead Guy Days festival from its original home in Nederland to Estes Park to help bolster the town’s economy during what otherwise would be a slow spring for visitation. She arrived as Estes Park was recovering from the effects of a disastrous wildfire that forced the town’s evacuation the autumn before and was still coping with restrictions imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her family  — husband Jeremy, who works for the federal government, and 7-year-old daughter Lola  — did not follow her to Estes Park, remaining in their home in Wellington, a city in Palm Beach County. Thus, for three years, Franker shuttled back and forth between Colorado and Florida.

A native of Olathe, Kansas, Franker came to Estes Park with a varied portfolio of experience: She had been a journalist, a prosecuting attorney, a business owner, a marketing manager, a wife and mother, and even a cheerleader for the National Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs. Before taking the Visit Estes Park position, she served two years as senior vice president for marketing and communications for Visit Lauderdale, which promoted tourism in Broward County, just north of Miami, with an annual budget of $30 million. She ran communications company Kara Franker Inc. from 2012 to 2019.