The Lafayette Downtown Development Authority (DDA) held its regularly scheduled meeting on June 9, 2025, at 5:00 PM. The meeting primarily consisted of a training workshop facilitated by Downtown Colorado Inc. (DCI) titled "Downtown Development Authorities 101." The board approved the minutes from the May 12, 2025, meeting and received staff updates. No public comments were made.
25 meeting of the Lapia Downtown Development Authority. Um, executive director Keating, then we have a roll call vote. Director Barnes, Director Kagan here, Director Hardy, here, Director Hover, here, Director Lako, uh, Director Mundine, present, Director Rogers here, and Director Barnes is taking a time. Okay. Yeah, first on the agenda is public input. If any member of the public wishes to speak, please come to the podium and you'll have five minutes to speak. Seeing no other members who wish to speak, I'll now close public input. We'll now move on to approval of the May 12th, 2025 meeting minutes. Are there any corrections to the minutes? Would someone like to make a motion? Go ahead. I'll make a motion to approve the meeting notes as written. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes. And now we're moving on to the presentation and workshop. The first agenda item is downtown Colorado Inc. Training, Downtown Development Authorities 101. Carrying over. I'll now turn it over to Executive Director Keating to kick us off. Great. So thank you everyone for being here this evening. Um, as my board knows, we've been taking a lot of time to do some foundational work as we get started. Our first meeting was in April, uh, where we passed a lot of resolutions to get the DDA up and running. In May, we looked back at Laura, our urban renewal authority, and what they've done for the past 25 years. Um, and tonight we're joined here with downtown Colorado Inc. to help us with the training just to get to know DDAs in general, and um, we're joined here with some fabulous uh experts and executive directors from across the state, and so this is really supposed to be a fun casual discussion and jump in throughout, and I'm gonna turn it over to Kat to kick us off and do some introductions. Great, thank you so much, and thanks for having us. Um, my name is Kath Corell, and I'm with Downtown Colorado Inc. We have we were formed in 1982 to help communities look at the different types of tools and to work with the different types of tools that work around your downtown town centers and commercial districts. So we work with business improvement districts, downtown development authorities, and urban renewal authorities, and so we have worked with both the city of Lafayette in the past as well as the Urban Renewal Authority, and we're happy to be here with your downtown development authority. Um we do training, we do facilitated conversations, we have a lot going on, and so I will um let you all know that at you're a member of our organization, and so we have a resource library, we have different trainings going on all the time. So if you want more information, we've got more. Um we did put together some um, I think it's a really interesting program. We work pretty closely with Bridget over the last I don't know, we started talking six months ago now. Um but we've put together some uh stuff. So what we're gonna look at today is really giving you a high-level overview of um what DDAs look like, then we're gonna have lessons learned. We have three different uh DDA leaders here tonight, and then we'll we have financial advisors that work with DDAs as well as partners for communities that are looking to foster a vital downtown core. Um, and so our goal is really to frame this discussion to give you a little bit of background and uh like a high-level look at what DDAs do, and then you can hear specifics about what these DDAs do, and then we should talk about what you want to do. Um, and that is our goal to give you that that overview from around the state, and then at the end we'll debrief and have you share kind of like what is the cream of the crop, what are the things that you heard, what are the things that really sparked your fancy and you would like to see your DEA do. Um with that, I just I I like to share this quote. Um, people are longing for a place not only to live but also to love, and I think the trick about these they're all Title 31 districts. So the statute is Title 31 that enables bids, DDAs, QRAs, and it's all about place-based community and economic development with the idea that you define your geographic area, and what you are doing is not making that okay, you're not doing standards, you're looking for excellence. And it's all about place-based community and economic development with the idea that you define your geographic area, and what you are doing is not making that okay. You're not doing standards, you're looking for excellence. So you want to take it above and beyond, and you want to create places that have a sense of belonging that have that feeling from all of your people in your community that this is a thing. This is this is where we all come together. We share our ideas, we invest our money, we spend our money, we earn our money, right?