City of Fort Collins | Under-Resourced Buildings Engagement

under-resourced buildings engagement

Lotus worked with the City of Fort Collins to engage under-resourced building (URB) stakeholders. The core purpose of the engagement was to gather insight into specific tools, resources, and other support mechanisms that Fort Collins could deploy to support commercial and multifamily building owners and tenants in achieving greater energy efficiency. Lotus delivered a final report to the client that compiled current stakeholder challenges in pursuing energy efficiency and provided research-backed recommendations for programs that could overcome those challenges. The team successfully engaged all stakeholder types, including, but not limited to, affordable housing providers and nonprofits supporting affordable housing providers, multifamily tenants, business tenants and commercial developers, collecting critical data and program or policy recommendations specific to these building types.

The team applied community-centered principles throughout the engagement process to ensure reach with key URBs. Lotus developed a context guide that documented the factors and processes for the City to consider when developing the engagement strategy, resources, and support services to help URB communities make building improvements. The context guide served as the foundation for fair and defensible engagement throughout the project. 

Lotus also developed a stakeholder map of URBs based on the City’s specific, data-driven definition. Our team spearheaded the creation of the matrix of data criteria defining and categorizing URBs. Following that, buildings were specifically identified and targeted for engagement based on their criteria score.

Lotus facilitated a number of engagements, including in-person focus groups, virtual focus groups, informational interviews, and listening sessions. All engagements were planned with a focus on bringing the community together, including providing participant stipends, food, and childcare while ensuring all materials and presentations were translated and interpreted into languages most appropriate for the audiences. Lotus conducted all Spanish written translations in-house. We contracted with the Community Language Cooperative (CLC) to provide interpretation services for in-person meetings in Spanish and for translation services in Vietnamese, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese.