Downtown Colorado Inc. tours Carbondale, flags housing, parking and business viability as top downtown issues

Downtown Colorado, Inc. (DCI) spent several days in Carbondale meeting with residents, business owners and town leaders and will deliver a short action‑oriented report in roughly four to six weeks.

DCI Executive Director Katherine Carell told the Board of Trustees the organization’s early survey and engagement findings point to three interlocking challenges: housing affordability, business viability and foot traffic/parking. “Housing affordability … is an underlying issue and it’s going to impact everything,” Carell said, summarizing the pattern DCI saw in responses and street interviews.

The DCI team — including marketing lead Monica Kurtz, retail consultant Sarah Webinson and landscape architect Jason James — described strategies that communities often use to address those problems. They said Carbondale’s options include encouraging mixed‑use town‑center development with workforce housing, creating incubator or cost‑controlled commercial spaces to help new businesses start, and aligning events more tightly to measurable economic goals.

Carell emphasized that events and programming should support stated community goals: “Events are very labor intensive. You want to make sure that the events that you do are accomplishing the goals that you have,” she said. DCI also briefed trustees on governance and finance tools — such as business improvement districts and downtown development authorities — that can provide stable management and funding for centralized downtown services and marketing.

Trustees and P&Z members who participated in the on‑site workshops generally placed Carbondale between the “growing” and “mature” phases on DCI’s downtown lifecycle scale, noting a strong regional reputation but local pressures from affordability and limited nonprofit and staff capacity. One trustee summarized that the town’s “outside perception might be stronger than what we really are” for businesses operating day‑to‑day.

DCI will deliver a concise report with short‑, mid‑ and long‑term recommendations and an action list assigning roles to the town, nonprofit partners and business groups. Carell offered to present the report to the town and suggested a public community meeting to walk through recommended actions.

Town officials said they plan to review the report jointly with partner organizations and community members, and trustees encouraged broad participation in the follow‑up meeting to shape future projects and funding decisions.