Louisville, CO: Mayor Chuck Sisk Interview

Chuck Sisk
Years in Louisville: 25
Elected Mayor: 2003; re-elected 2007
Prior civic involvement: Elected to City Council in 1991

Q: Why do people enjoy living in Louisville?

A: Louisville has an identity of that of a small town and I think that the citizens feel a direct sense of belonging. We're very citizen oriented; very attuned to a lot of the issues that we see in Boulder County.

I was walking into city hall the other day and I saw some people outside that were clearly looking at city hall and I just went up and introduced myself. I said, "What brings you to Louisville?" They said, "Our daughter bought a home here and we're here visiting for the first time." I said, "Well, what attracted her to Louisville?" They say they like small towns. They like the parks. They like the amenities. They like the fact that we don't have any stop lights or parking meters in downtown Louisville. They like that you're walking around and someone such as the mayor will stop and say hello.

We have pride in our city, but we're certainly able to look at other cities and respect them and recognize some of their ideas are just wonderful ideas. I think so many times cities are afraid to acknowledge other cities and their virtues. We're not trying to emulate any other community; however we're comfortable considering other ideas. There's a certain amount of confidence in what we're doing. I think that really resonates with people.

Q: What projects are you excited about concerning Louisville right now or any exciting news?

A: The announcement of ConocoPhillips choosing Louisville for their new Global Technology Center and Corporate Learning Center is an exciting event for us. It should also be exciting for Boulder, Boulder County and the University of Colorado. The decision they made to come to Louisville is going to have some of the same of effects as when IBM located in Boulder in the 1960's. There's no question that we could all benefit from having ConocoPhillips come to Louisville. They're going to be working on technologies that are going to be so necessary for my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren.

That's what's so exciting to me, and it does give us a great deal of diversity in our development because they're going to be putting together a new campus. It's going to require a lot of effort; it's going to require a lot of planning. I see this as being an area that will be combined with the residential component. It's going to be an area that will be certainly a very active downtown area.

Q: What motivated you to become mayor of Louisville?

A: I was first elected to Council in 1991. My thought then was one of really serving the community. I liked the fact that I would get to know more about our community. I was not necessarily thinking the mayor was the next stop by any means. It was a way for me to put my own brand on some of the things we were doing.

I don't want to say that I was taking necessarily a different direction. But, I thought when I ran that we needed to be more external. Louisville needed to get more involved with our neighboring cities and we also needed to get more involved in Metro Mayors Caucus. I also sensed that getting involved and having a relationship with the School District was necessary, but, honestly we didn't have those relationships.

So, I spent a lot of my time externally. Externally as far as going to Washington, supporting the mayors and the County Commissioners; mostly we were talking about financing for Highway 36. Last year I was the chair person of the Metro Mayor's caucus, which is 37 mayors in the metro area. I think that is really a compliment to be chosen as the chair person. Either that or no one else wanted to run. It really allowed me to become much more aware of other cities and I really learned by helping and listening to other people.

Q: What are the biggest challenges facing Louisville now and the future?

A: I think clearly the biggest challenge is one of making sure that we continue our citizen involvement in the face of change. There's going to be change and any time you have change, people are suspicious. You're going to have a number of your residents that are going to say, "Leave things the way they are because look how great Louisville is." And my answer to that is, that you've got to be visionaries because we didn't get where we were by not making certain decisions. We knew we'd need to be able to pace ourselves and to grow commercially and grow our research and development in a sense of a small town.

I must say that one of memories of when I moved to Louisville is that it reminded me of the small town in which I grew up. We built from 4,000 or 2,500 in the early 1980's to 19,000 and we still have the small town feel. Really that is what is very significant for people that are looking to locate in Louisville; it certainly was a factor in ConocoPhillips' selection of Louisville. I thought that in part defines Louisville, it's just a reminder of what Louisville was 60, 70 years ago: a town based on energy technology. We just have to try to amalgamate those two visions together.

Q: How do you envision the evolution of Louisville's residential housing stock?

A: Well, we've got a pretty good handle on that actually. In the 1990s Louisville was growing really fast, 500 or 600 permits per year. That was one of the reasons that I ran for Council. I thought Louisville was growing too fast and needed to have some control mechanisms. I ran to have reasonable, responsible growth. We've gone from a very fast housing development to where we just slowed down to a snail's pace. Now, I don't think either is necessarily that good. I think with 500 homes we couldn't absorb that - but one year we issued 6 building permits. That doesn't cause enough regeneration of people and then home prices become excited. If you're bringing in additional employment bases, I'm a big believer that we need to provide part of the housing sector. You can't just say, "we want you to work here, but we don't have any housing available. " We have approved 350 homes in north Louisville and on the west side we've got another 350 homes. They'll be more compact, higher density and only about 100 a year will be built. So, really we're going to have some inventory and I think some choices for residents. We're not going to grow beyond the 22.5 to 23,000 range in the next 20 years. Our room will be limited but at least we'll be growing some and it'll be at pace. That's what we want to do is responsible, reasonable growth.

The ConocoPhillips development is going to be an extension of our town; a continuation of our residential core. It's going to be a transportation corridor with housing options where you can live, work and really walk over to what would be the continuation of downtown. I think that that's going to be something that's going to really define Louisville.

Q: Is Louisville doing anything special to attract businesses?

A: Our economic development base has really been enhanced by virtue of the formalization of our business assistance program. [Previous City Councilor] Don Brown did a great job of really understanding what was happening in the economic landscape and then we hired Becky Hogan as an economic development specialist. The Business Retention and Development Committee has been effective and the Revitalization Commission's mission was recently re-approved by the voters. Members of the commission, the City Manager and the City Council visit our businesses to learn how we can help them.

For example, we just approved a business assistance package for a new building on the corner of Walnut and Main. It's 39,000 square feet of combination of commercial and some lofts on top, underground parking and then some offices, but really more residential on top and then retail. I can see another very, very good restaurant coming into this spot.

I challenged Council to say this is an opportunity for new business and even some of the Council members that had issues with this assistance package saw this as being of importance for downtown and it passed 7 to 0. We've had success doing this with the Waterloo Icehouse, Empire and other businesses we believe are a valuable addition to Louisville and appeal to Louisville's residents.

I'm going this week to a convention in Las Vegas - the shopping center convention of 50,000 people. It's so important that people know we're interested and I think by being there we are able to spread the word about Louisville's opportunities. We set up meetings in advance and this year we have 13 or 14 interviews with various companies who could be a good fit for Louisville.

We're constantly making an effort to say "How are you doing, what can we do to help you?" We speak to small businesses and large corporations. They say, "What do you want from us?" We reply "We want to hear from you. What can we do better?" We just go out and listen to people; we're making business for our businesses.

Q: Could you share a couple of your favorite "only in Louisville" experiences?

A: Oh, I don't know if this is only in Louisville, but let me just give an example. I went to a funeral a couple of weeks ago for a gentleman that had been a long time advocate, born in Louisville. It was a sad occasion, but what you saw there was three or four generations of Louisville families. When talking to them you could see that pride exudes from them as lifelong and long-time Louisville residents. All the stories about who knows who and who used to work where. I'm not saying that you don't have multi-generations anywhere else, but you don't always see it come forward like that.

At the Empire Lounge [in Old Town] they've had a photographer take pictures of a number of people in Louisville. This is for a public display called Faces of Louisville. They have police officers, store clerks, myself, and many other folks from around town. They've got John Breaux who picks up the trash in Louisville. What other community has a person like John who's out there picking up bottles and cans? The other day I saw him with leaves. Why does he do that? He does it because he loves Louisville. He doesn't do it because he's paid to do it. He's one of these unsung heroes. That's really what makes Louisville. It's very touching for me and it's certainly humbling to be included with these people whom I respect. That just represents Louisville to me.

Q: What do you enjoy most about living in Colorado?

A: My great-great-grandparents homesteaded in southeastern Colorado in the 1840s. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Colorado person.

What I like about Colorado is that we are such a open state. We open our arms to people. I like the fact that we're a moderate state. You look at our politics and certainly we have pockets where people are characterized as being liberal or more conservative, but look at the main core of our state. Our state is really in the middle.

The climate is wonderful. You get up in the morning you see fresh air. Actually you don't see any air at all, that's the key.

I'm just fortunate to be there at the right time at the right place. Hopefully people understand that's who I am, that I'm really keyed on the individuals. I'm keyed on the personal contact and I've had many a person say, "Well, what do you want to do after you're mayor?" I've said, I've got the best job going! Why would I want to do anything else but be mayor of Louisville? I get to go home at night, sleep in my own bed. I've got a wonderful family and a wonderful community. So, what could be better?