Bisbee Forward September 2025 Highlights and Community Progress
- steve05335
- Oct 8
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 9
Hello Bisbee!
There is a lot of very positive activity occurring with Bisbee Forward!
Board News:
We have finalized our Board with 11 members.
The four officers are:
Steve Ball (B Active), President
Mike Ablin (The Legion), Vice President
Carrick Sears (The Carrick), Treasurer
Kelly Galligan (Poco), Secretary
At-Large members are:
Eva Rupert (The Jonquil)
Alex Mastrangelo (The Hitching Post/Gene’s Place)
Gretchen Bonaduce (Greenway Manor/ Café Cornucopia)
Nicole France (Canyon Rose Hotel)
Kelsey Allen (Allen & Co)
Searra & Lisa Head (Eldorado Suites Hotel)
Liza Kovach (BorderBooks)
Recent Events:
Community Partnership Panel:
Bisbee Forward was invited to join the Community Partnership Panel (hosted by Freeport McMoRan) and we attended this meeting September 11th. This is a great opportunity to engage with other Bisbee Stakeholders and we expect this to be a terrific collaboration opportunity.
Bisbee Forward on KGUN-TV in Tucson
KBRP Bisbee Radio Interview
Workgroup Updates:
Government Affairs: This workgroup has submitted letters to the City of Bisbee requesting details and clarification regarding Parking and Trash. The goal is to baseline the current maps, schedules, enforcement, and escalation paths for these topics.
Finance: This workgroup has been reviewing data to standardize reporting and analysis of economic results in Bisbee, and is also gathering baseline data on lodging occupancy with the goal of moving forward into a more predictive approach to help identify opportunities to improve visits.
Collaboration: We have published a Member Directory for Members only as a way to improve access to each other. Members are also beginning to explore package offers and we expect this to develop in the coming quarter.
Events: We are focusing on impacting the New Years holiday in several ways:
First, given that New Years is on a Thursday, we are exploring opportunities to expand the programming of events beyond New Years Eve.
By offering more activities we believe we will be able to offer an attractive escape for the New Year to visitors, enabling 2, 3 and 4 day stays – in doing so, we believe we can bundle fun things for visitors to enrich their stay.
We are working with hoteliers and event organizers in town to suss this out, with the eye toward creating some programmatic advertising to drive awareness, bookings, and engagement.
Marketing: Following up on our initial presentation to the City Council on August 5th, we have progressed with the city over the past month to complete our Assessment and Next Steps phase. We expect to present this readout at the last council meeting slated for September 30th.
The assessment has involved meetings with the city to request data, meetings with the top contracted advertising vendors, and a meeting with the Arizona Office of Tourism (AOT). In addition, given the recent resignations at the Tourism/Visitor Center, we have discussed strategies to rethink the functions of the Tourism Tax that would result in better effectiveness and efficiency. We expect these discussions to advance more rapidly in the coming weeks.
Membership:
We have 64 committed members as of this date, with several others pending. These members employ more than 330 of our neighbors. Membership opened up in June, so very good progress overall and we are pleased with the wide inclusion of our membership. We expect we will exceed 70 by year end, and plan to publicly release our membership roster of businesses to the media and on our website in the coming week.
The Board and General Membership meets monthly. The next month will be a busy time for us as business owners, and Bisbee Forward will be ramping as well. As always, we welcome questions, and most of all participation in our workgroups.
Thanks for your support and we look forward to more progress just ahead!
Cheers,
The Executive Board
Bisbee Forward
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