Business View Civil and Municipal | Volume 3, Issue 3

76 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3 BVM: How are you enabling business recovery from the pandemic? Kraft: “The economic impact of COVID-19 hit Colorado’s urban centers especially hard. For example, downtown Denver is normally an epicenter of business and tourism travel, and normally has tens of thousands of people in town to work and spend money. Denver was hit the most from a revenue perspective. Alternatively, some of our more remote and scenic areas, where people could get out of congested cities, saw tremendous visitation. There was a definite geographic divide. Some of our mountain communities even had increased enrollment in their school districts and banner years in sales tax. Along with that boom, though, there’s been heavy trail usage and all the resources and amenities up there have been squeezed and constrained. We love visitors but with a robust tourism economy brings various issues to work through, like visitor management. “Colorado tends to skew toward small business more than some other states. As a result, we’ve put a lot of effort in supporting small business access to federal programs and dollars. To support the state’s economic recovery, we work to help households and businesses access safety-net programs, like the Paycheck Protection Program, unemployment insurance and others to bridge the gap to better times. At the peak of COVID, we did a lot of direct outreach counseling to businesses. We also set up our own programs to provide grants and loans to small businesses that cannot access traditional lenders. One program in particular was called the Energize Colorado Gap Fund. We also launched a series of artist relief programs, as the creative industries sector was hit really hard. The Film Office even pivoted to give grants to rural theaters when they were shut down to help them remain in business. “Every person at OEDIT participated in promoting, supporting or building programs to provide relief and recovery. And, we continue to do that with new programs that are on the and powerful part of OEDIT. It leads the marketing, management and promotion of the state’s tourism economy and supports destinations across the state. The Office of Outdoor Recreation Industry works closely with the CTO but approaches outdoor recreation from a business perspective. It works to foster environmental stewardship and attract outdoor recreation suppliers and manufacturers. “Lastly, Colorado Creative Industries division, the state arts agency, promotes and develops the confluence between artists and creative endeavors and economic development. It supports that work with a variety of programs, including low-cost housing for artists to support community revitalization through creative districts.”