Colorado Main Street Best Practices Manual & Downtown Planning

The Colorado Department of Local Affairs selected Ayres to develop short reports and videos with tips on managing local volunteer boards within the Colorado Main Street Program. Ayres is facilitating strategic planning workshops with three of the program’s communities to help cultivate their vision.

In the project’s first segment, Ayres created a series of eight Best Practices Snapshot Reports, which are one- to two-page summaries of leadership and management pointers on how to run a Main Street organization efficiently. These attractive reports capture the reader’s attention while packing a potent dose of information into a tiny package.

To spread the word about these reports, the Ayres team also created two-minute summary videos that local boards could queue up to provide an introduction to the information in each report. With the intention of sending these videos out via social media, the entire campaign acknowledges that volunteer board members have limited time and want to spend that time improving their communities.

The second segment of the project involves working directly with three Colorado communities. Consolidating a grab bag of ideas for making the downtowns of Lamar, Buena Vista, and Meeker more vibrant, our team held a series of workshops in each community that resulted in strategic plans with action steps to help direct and focus activity over the coming years. Our communication expertise is highlighted in brochures that will help the programs build local support for key initiatives while staying on message.

• Matt Ashby, Vice President - Development Services

• Downtown & Urban Planning & Design