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A Robust, Diverse, and Sustainable Economy

Goal 23: Cultivate a strong, circular economy that supports local businesses, prioritizes partnerships, employs new technologies and innovative approaches, and invests in the community by providing equitable access to economic opportunities and providing resources to Lakewood residents and business owners.
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Lakewood is a significant economic center in the Denver region, providing over 70,000 jobs in government, education, energy, healthcare, and other industries. The city’s businesses, both local and regional, not only provide essential employment opportunities but also help fulfill the daily needs of community members including retail services, grocery stores, education, medical care, childcare, entertainment and more.

The City of Lakewood focuses on sustaining a strong economic base that enhances the community’s quality of life and vitality by:

  • Supporting responsible real estate development and infrastructure, while enhancing regional competitiveness,
  • Fostering environmental and economic sustainability,
  • Promoting diverse job opportunities,
  • Supporting small businesses, and
  • Preserving the city’s robust local workforce.

Business Improvement Districts and Business Associations also play a vital role in Lakewood’s economy by providing a platform for outreach and engagement opportunities, support, and advocacy to surrounding businesses and property owners.

  • Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) work with businesses to improve existing commercial areas or help create new areas. They focus on advocacy, identity, business attraction, safety, and economic development activities to help ensure the area evolves based on the community’s vision. At the time of the Comprehensive Plan adoption, Lakewood’s two very active and engaged BIDs are the Lakewood-West Colfax Business Improvement District (LWCBID) and Alameda Connects (ACBID).
  • Business Associations are organizations formed by businesses to advocate for their collective interests. They can serve as forums for community dialogue and resource sharing. The number of Business Associations in Lakewood ebbs and flows but at the time of the Comprehensive Plan adoption, there are five.

There is a need to build a truly resilient economy for all members of the community to ensure that people and businesses are prepared to withstand economic uncertainties and able to adapt to changing conditions over time. Continuing to grow and innovate within the local economy will help Lakewood maintain high rates of employment, business retention, employee health, and fiscal responsibility, while improving the ability of the environment to sustain itself for future generations. To achieve this, Lakewood must go beyond just seeking traditional economic stability and embrace a circular economic approach that reduces pollution, restores nature, and supports a high-quality of life for workers. This includes increasing repair, reuse, and recycling businesses that reduce waste while creating new business and job opportunities and encouraging resource efficiency through innovations that use waste by-products from one process as a raw material in another, keeping resources and materials in use for as long as possible.

Goal 23 Strategies: A Robust, Diverse, and Sustainable Economy

This goal and primary strategies focus on the City’s role in strengthening the local economy. This centers around supporting businesses and business organizations, prioritizing workforce development so all community members have the skills needed to participate in the economy and leading in sustainable practices. Cultivating partnerships and leveraging emerging technologies are also critical components to achieving this goal. Supporting strategies illustrate the connection between economy and transportation, equity, sustainability, neighborhood vitality, and community health.

Primary Strategies

  • Identify under-utilized and under-performing commercial areas and assist in their revitalization, including decarbonization, through the use of state and federal programs such as enterprise zones, the Lakewood Reinvestment Authority (LRA), and other programs and financial incentives.

  • Support the development, growth, and retention of local businesses.

  • Cultivate a skilled, diverse, and trained workforce and provide access to equitable job opportunities.

  • Attract, retain, and support the expansion of a variety of industries to diversify the local economy and increase capital investment.

  • Develop and support creative and innovative partnerships to explore financing mechanisms and work collaboratively towards shared economic goals for the city.

  • Support economic growth and innovation through City policy, regulations, tools, and programs

Supporting Strategies

  • Engage with community partners to identify gaps in healthy food access. Support and encourage efforts to fill those gaps through actions such as community gardens, farm stands, fresh food distribution in local stores, attraction of new grocery stores, retention of existing grocery stores, regulatory changes, food rescue, education for gardening, and preservation and others.

  • Protect lives, prevent property and environmental damage, and stabilize the economy during large-scale emergencies and disasters. Collaborate with internal departments and external organizations to proactively plan for hazard mitigation, emergency preparedness, emergency response, and recovery efforts in order to increase community resilience.

  • Promote Lakewood’s arts and cultural programs, events, facilities, and resources to attract new businesses, visitors and residents.

  • Foster creative entrepreneurship by ensuring City policies support incubator and startup spaces, funding opportunities, and business development resources for artists, cultural enterprises, and individuals wishing to pursue creative ventures in Lakewood. Strategically encourage these activities in locations where there is already a concentration of creative activity or where the introduction of new creative activities could breathe life and activity into new spaces.

  • Continue to encourage a mix of land uses to attract diverse, innovative and sustainable industries.

  • Encourage and support activity hubs throughout the city with mixes of land uses that can help protect health and the natural environment and make the surrounding environment more attractive, well connected, economically stronger, socially diverse, and resilient to climate change. These nodes can be the hub for gathering and social events and blend into the surrounding context(s) of the area.

  • Encourage land uses that integrate housing, employment, and community amenities within walking distance of each other.

  • Actively participate in efforts to strengthen Colorado’s circular economy through meaningful involvement with regional nonprofit organizations and state agencies, and by attracting new and supporting existing ventures focused on reduction, reuse, refill, rental, repair, and refurbishment, recycling, composting, and energy recovery.