Boulder Together Second Quarter Recap

Our community faces a turning point, and so does the Boulder Together program.

A healthy community evolves over time, as do the challenges it faces. COVID and many other local and global factors wrought changes in our society, economy, and business operations that weren’t on anyone’s radar just a few years ago. While we still work to complete our current Boulder Together mission—and the results of that work are outlined below—it’s time we dig deep into the implications of our changing environment, identify the critical issues we need to address, and develop the best solutions.

Dive into our second quarter highlights, and share in our Boulder Together successes!

Community Infrastructure

• Transportation Connections convened the first Gunbarrel Shuttle Marketing and Branding Advisory Committee meeting in May. Watch the May Kickoff Meeting.
• Our Transportation Connections team represents the Chamber on the Boulder Connectors, which successfully lobbied the City of Boulder to accomplish two important milestones. Read more about these accomplishments on the Transportation Connections website.
• Transportation Connections celebrated our most successful Bike to Work Day ever on June 26, with more than 600 visitors to our breakfast station! Thanks to our outreach, Boulder businesses made a great showing in the regional Way to Go Bike to Work Day Business Challenge, taking first place in two of the five categories and besting businesses located throughout the entire eight-county Denver metropolitan region. Read more here.

Workforce Development

• At the halfway mark of 2024, we now sit with 14 registered adult apprenticeships spanning healthcare, manufacturing, IT, and financial services. Read more about apprenticeships here.
• On April 18, the LifeScience Workforce Development Group of Boulder held its BioBoost event — convening industry leaders in LifeSciences — to explore the talent needs of companies engaged with drugs and pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and research and testing. View a detailed report highlighting workforce data and discussion notes on the Economic Council website.
• The Boulder Area Professional Services Sector Partnership launched Tuesday, April 16, with a passionate group of industry leaders in the banking, human resources, staffing, and business and financial services spaces. Learn more about the Professional Services Partnership here.

Quality Business Environment

• Initial permit reviews for large building projects have moved from a hair-pulling period of up to 14 weeks to now being regularly near the city’s performance goal of six weeks.
• Building inspections that occurred at widely varying rates are now targeted at a single business day.
• The P&DS team now resolves 69% of planning questions and conflicts prior to the need for a meeting.
• P&DS secured City Council approval to eliminate the site review process for projects with no site change. This adjustment is expected to reduce the number of commercial developments subject to use review by 40%, cutting approximately six months of plan approval time.
• It now takes at least two Planning Board members to call up a project for further time-consuming and costly review.