Metro Mobile Tour highlights vibrant downtowns

Participants in this year's Metro Mobile Tour.

Earlier this month, Downtown Colorado, Inc. and CML put on our annual Metro Mobile Tour. This year’s tour had everything: tax increment financing, adaptive reuse, business improvement districts, facades, urban renewal authorities, and shuttered Chase banks. Superior, Louisville, Lafayette, and Erie showed off their downtowns and highlighted their economic development efforts, demonstrating success in finding balance between attracting businesses and visitors to the areas while honoring community history and character. Here’s what we saw in each community.

Superior

The tour's first stop in Superior, where we enjoyed to town's new civic space.

Superior’s Urban Renewal Authority (SURA) was formed by voters in the 1990s. During this time, the SURA authorized a sales tax increment financing agreement that applied to the current downtown when the SURA boundary was expanded after the town annexed 156 acres of vacant land in 1997. The Downtown Superior Master Plan was approved in 2012, and construction began in 2016. The Downtown Master Plan was approved in 2019, ushering in new commercial spaces and multi-family units. Superior’s creative solution to bringing emerging entrepreneurs to their downtown features their live/work units. These spaces are zoned residential but have space for tenants to run small businesses out of their unit with street-facing shopfronts as part of the unit.  

Thank you to Ellen Robertson, Superior’s economic development manager, for showing us around downtown Superior and highlighting the progress the town has made with Superior’s brand-new downtown.

Louisville

The Corner, a Louisville local business.

In 2024, Louisville adopted their Downtown Vision Plan in coordination with their urban renewal authority, Louisville Revitalization Commission. We witnessed the first phase of the plan, the Front and Center Project, in action. This phase focuses on short-term implementation goals, including placemaking initiatives, improvements to public gathering space, and safety improvements. Louisville works to preserve the town’s mining era history and pairs that with programs aimed at supporting businesses with reimbursements for eligible upgrades and improvements. We toured three historic preservation projects throughout Louisville, where they work closely with property owners and businesses to renovate historic buildings and ensure businesses are not overly burdened, all while the community gets to honor its heritage.

A special thanks to Vanessa Zárate and Austin Brown with the City of Louisville, who showed our group how Louisville’s economic vitality efforts are making sure Louisville remains a vibrant, community-oriented city.

Lafayette

The Yard, a public-private partnership serving as a much-appreciated community space in Lafayette.

Lafayette’s Urban Renewal Authority established a TIF district through their downtown, which expired in 2024. The city’s Downtown Development Authority carries forward the URA’s work, providing small business support, investing in public spaces, and improving public infrastructure in their downtown area. Our tour of Lafayette was chalk-full of exciting projects that highlight the power of public-private partnerships and creative adaptive reuse projects that honor town character. Lafayette works closely with small businesses and property owners in their downtown to ensure the community’s needs are met. One successful example is the city’s work with the owners of Vintrey, who owned the vacant lot next to their business, now named The Yard at Vintrey. The Yard is now a pocket park featuring a deck, ample seating, and a refurbished Airstream trailer to host a local vendor. While the park is privately owned, it is fully open to the public, where community members can gather, eat, play, and enjoy programming.

We are grateful to Brigid Keating, Isabella Nunez, and the Town of Lafayette for putting together our tour and offering a glimpse into the wonderful progress made by the City of Lafayette to benefit businesses and residents.

Erie

The tour group learns about 615 Briggs on its very own patio.

As an 1800s mining town, Erie is not lacking in historic buildings and charm. While the downtown area anchors the town’s booming population, the Historic Old Town URA works with property owners and offers generous TIF incentives to encourage commercial development that preserves the town’s rich history. A highlight of the URA’s work is 615 Briggs, where the property owners developed a commercial space aimed at fostering small businesses with help from the town. While the building is new construction, it blends in with surrounding buildings, and its owners benefit from TIF incentives. They pass this benefit along to their tenants by keeping rents at or below market rate.

Our tour of Erie was made possible by Julian Jacquin who highlights the work the town does to balance rapid growth with a rich history of mining on the front range. Thank you Erie

CML thanks the team at Downtown Colorado, Inc. for their hard work in putting together this year’s Metro Mobile Tour. We also thank our host communities, Superior, Louisville, Lafayette, and Erie — we always welcome the opportunity to visit our members in-person and celebrate the work they do for their community.