For this biweekly meeting of the Finance and Business Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the Finance and Business Committee starting now.

Right.

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to Finance and Business Committee.

Today is Tuesday, June 23rd.

My name is Sedana Gonzalez Putiades, and I am one of your council members at large and chair of this committee.

We will start with introductions from council members that are joining us here today before we get into what's on today's agenda.

With that said, I will be going to council members that are joining us virtually.

We'll start with their introductions.

Good morning, Stacey Gilmore, District 11.

And Councilwoman Sawyer might not be on yet.

Alright, so we'll go to the room and I will start over here to my right.

Good morning.

Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Good morning, Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

Good morning, Darrell Watson, fine, district nine.

Good morning, Madisonville, Northwest Denver District 1.

All right.

So we have a couple of items on the agenda today that will require action.

We have first starting us off with the licensing and consumer protections department, and they are here to present on their licensing code updates.

Just so everyone knows we will hear the presentation.

Because this item requires that we will have 15 minutes of public comment, and we'll give, I will give more instructions on how that will how that process will go when we get to it.

So with that said, we'll go ahead and turn it over to our folks here at the end of the table.

If you can introduce yourselves and then proceed with your presentation.

Hi everybody, Molly Duple Shane, Executive Director of Licensing and Consumer Protection.

Hi everyone, Abby Soyson.

I'm a senior policy analyst with licensing and consumer protection.

All right.

So yeah, we are here today to present an updated regulatory framework for entertainment licenses and how we regulate entertainment businesses here in Denver.

So first, just to kind of set the stage, pun intended, um, Denver's entertainment scene is really well known and is growing.

Um largest concert market in the United States.

Uh, we had the second most per capita entertainment spending among U.S.

cities, and in 2025, we had 37.6 uh million visitors and 10.5 billion dollars in visitor spending for live entertainment.

Um, so our entertainment and nightlife venues are an asset that we really want to protect.

Um, we have really have a spectrum of venues here in Denver, and we've worked really closely with a lot of them over the last year or so.

Um, we have small venues, larger venues, really everything in between.

Um, and we just really recognize that they play an important um and distinct role in Denver's music, entertainment, and cultural ink ecosystem.

Um, they support artists, they provide jobs, they activate neighborhoods and cultural districts, um they contribute to our Denver or to our character and appeal.

Um, and I think one of the key pieces is that this is all, you know, it wasn't by accident, this was all designed and curated and thoughtful and intentional, and so that was really the approach that we wanted to take with these regulations was um we wanted to design and curate some thoughtful and intentional regulations that allow us to properly regulate these types of businesses and offer fun in a safe way, and that allows us to protect and retain these valuable assets.

Um, why are we proposing this change?

Um these are some changes that we see as long overdue.

Um, these uh regulations haven't had a comprehensive update um in many decades.

Um, and in some areas, um, these types of businesses are overregulated, and then in some areas they are very underregulated.

Um, and so the current framework really just wasn't um something that we saw was working for really any of the stakeholders.

Um, so when looking at businesses, um it's an overly complicated system with 14 different license types that really didn't have distinction between them.

Um, and then as well as the neighbors who you know provide input to these types of businesses.

Um, one thing we saw was they had to rely on good neighbor agreements um to get the businesses to address some gaps in our regulations.

Um, and then from a safety perspective, we didn't have the tools that we needed to address um, you know, bad actors when those issues did occur.

Um, and so um that was really looking at all of those um from the lens of our different stakeholders.

Really wanted to take a comprehensive um view and do an overall update.

And then we do have this reference to a 1929 study around dance halls, which is a license that still exists in our code that we will now be repealing with this proposal.

And this is a license that actually predated this 1929 study.

So I think that just speaks to how really outdated some of these regulations are.

Within the last year or plus, some of us have attended and gone on site visits and experienced what we see as far as the let out crowd in Lodo around 2 a.m.

And really that was just something that drove home the need to really develop a comprehensive strategy to prevent and mitigate some safety issues that we see in this spaces.

And this license is just one of those pieces of the strategy, but it's one that we wanted to start with that we think is pretty important.

So to address some of the safety issues, something else that we really looked at is how safety can contribute to creating that thriving nightlife scene and nightlife economy.

And so, you know, we really came at this with the approach that safety measures are in the best interest of all that are involved, not just the patrons, but the businesses as well, the surrounding neighborhood and the community of those businesses.

We know that a lot of these businesses are already using some of these best practices around safety.