Building civic pride in downtown Loveland

PUBLISHED: January 25, 2026 at 7:29 AM MST by the Loveland Reporter Herald - SEE RH ARTICLE HERE
WRITTEN BY SEAN HAWKINS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY

I keep thinking about our Festival of Lights event which was held this past November.

A crowd of almost over 10,000 people came gathered in to downtown Loveland on a Friday night to kick off the Christmas and holiday season. The crowd jammed into the Foundry Community Plaza that night to join in the tree-lighting ceremony and visitors walked throughout downtown.
On Fourth Street attendees enjoyed local dance groups and performers, had the chance to view local art or even make an ornament for their tree at home, taste local foods and share in a unique and welcoming business district that is positively changing each year. It was certainly a night of Loveland putting its best foot forward as a community.

Festival of Lights also offered a glimpse into downtown’s future. The first two blocks of the Heart Improvement Plan opened to the public for the first time that evening. Our team hosted a stationary float parade in those two blocks. The floats were designed by local organizations and businesses and added a huge sense of enthusiasm to the event. With three more blocks of Fourth Street to be completed later this year, this was the first opportunity to visualize what our “main street” will look and feel like in the future.

As I walked around the event that night with my 8-year-old son Jack, I had dozens of community members stop and share how much they loved the feeling of the street and that they couldn’t believe how many folks were in downtown Loveland. Civic pride was being showcased in its highest level that evening. In the days that followed, our team enjoyed looking at the numerous photos, videos and comments community members shared online.

In the days after the event, I reflected on my first Festival of Lights in November 2018, a few months after I was hired to run the newly formed Loveland Downtown Development Authority (DDA). The event was held on two blocks of Fourth Street between Cleveland Avenue and Railroad Avenue and maybe had a few thousand people in attendance. While the event was festive and joyful, this year’s event reminded me of how much progress we’ve made in downtown in the last eight years and how bright our future can be with a continued commitment to investing in downtown, which in turn creates local civic pride.

How do you create civic pride? When I flew to Loveland in June 2018 to interview for my position, my first impression after taking a tour was that it felt like Loveland had given up on its downtown. Yes, the Foundry was under construction and there had been high profile building renovations completed such as the Rialto Bridge project, but the truth is you can’t revitalize a downtown district when small things such as weeds, grocery carts, trash and graffiti, tree pruning, working street lights, dog poop on the sidewalks, sign code violations and vacant historic structures aren’t addressed.

One of the key components I’ve learned in leading downtown revitalization is that you can’t make forward progress unless the district is clean and feels safe. The “small stuff” matters.

Our organization and board of directors has been focusing on the “small stuff” and I’m going to spend the next few columns telling my take on this subject. Since the Loveland DDA’s voters passed a measure for DDA debt in fall 2017, we have partnered with the private property owners to complete over 60 projects to improve their buildings and infrastructure. These projects include façade renovations (think of buildings such as the Pourhouse Restaurant, Urban Field Pizza, Josh and John’s Ice Cream, Lincoln Gallery, Comet Chicken, Verboten Brewing and more).

Tax increment investments to vacant or older properties (think the former Banner Medical building at Fifth Street and Cleveland that is now called Cleveland Station and houses six ground floor business and offices above, and the former Top Hat building on Fifth Street that now houses 477 Distilling, and the former Emmanuel Baptist Church on Third that now houses the Casa Sagrada).

In partnership with the city of Loveland, we’ve helped install more than a dozen fire suppression systems into some of our oldest buildings that not only helps with public safety, but updates them to modern code as well.

I will be writing a monthly column this year on the fourth Sunday of the month. I look forward to telling you more about the hows and whys of downtown revitalization in our wonderful community.

Sean Hawkins is the executive director of the Loveland Downtown District. The Loveland Downtown District is a partnership of the Loveland Downtown Development Authority and the Historic Loveland Business Improvement District. He has lived in Loveland since August 2018. He can be reached via email at shawkins@lovelandpartnership.org or by text at 970-699-2856.