Chilly winter greetings from Denver’s Office of Special Events! We hope this communication finds you warm and healthy.

The Office of Special Events (OSE) spent the past year supporting the City and County of Denver’s pandemic response and helping event organizers understand and comply with quickly-changing State and local Public Health Orders. Our office also took time to evaluate how we can better align our processes and procedures with national industry standards and implement common-sense efficiencies. We are proposing the following organizational change to ensure events and communities continue to safely and comfortably coexist and are interested in any feedback you may have.

OSE Proposes Moving into City Ordinance

This is BIG news! First, a little background. The Office of Special Events (OSE) was established under the Mayor’s Office in 2015 because of a growing need for city-wide coordination of public events and film projects taking place on public property (parks, streets, alleys and sidewalks).

In a typical, non-pandemic year, OSE helps more than 700 events and nearly 400 film projects navigate the City and County of Denver’s (CCD) application processes and meet permitting requirements. Specifically, OSE works with events that are open to the public, held on public property, are temporary in nature and involve more than one city agency. OSE’s oversight helps ensure that these events are safe, coordinated and compliant. This includes requirements around proactively and effectively notifying residents and businesses about event-related road closures, parking challenges, traffic and noise.

What’s needed? At this time, Denver is one of only a few large municipalities in the country that does not issue a Special Event Permit for events on public property. Special Event Permits are a national industry standard and an essential tool to ensure event safety and compliance with city requirements. In an effort to provide more sustainable and reliable services, OSE is developing a proposal to move OSE into City ordinance. This will establish OSE as a permanent, stand-alone agency in the CCD.

A Special Event Permit + an application fee. A Special Event Permit would give OSE enforcement authority to ensure that event organizers meet all CCD event requirements including, specifically, community notifications, COVID-19 mitigation plans and emergency action plans. These event elements are currently overseen by OSE, but without the official authority to enforce compliance.

A Special Event Permit application fee structure is also being proposed and will be finalized this spring. It is expected to range from $25 to $250 with an average application fee of approximately $75. The ordinance proposal will include criteria to ensure that the application fee promotes equity and will not be a barrier for community-driven events. Additionally, application fees would be postponed until 2023 in an effort to support the pandemic recovery of the event industry.

Outreach is underway. In late November, OSE began sharing information about the ordinance proposal and engaging with event organizers via email communications, a Virtual Town Hall meeting held on Dec. 9 (view the recording with passcode iR3g7*=4), and during a session at our annual Special Events (Virtual) Forum on Jan 27. We have also been collecting feedback from event organizers via an online feedback form.

What’s next? We will continue to collect public input through the end of February and then OSE will spend March incorporating that input into our final proposal. Throughout the spring and summer months, OSE will engage in the legislative process which will hopefully result in City Council approval of the final proposal.