Kourtny Garrett’s work turned downtown Dallas into a real neighborhood. Now she heads to Denver

Dallas is losing one of its most influential young leaders, a woman who, if you don’t know her name, has insisted for two decades that she make “us” rather than “me”.

Kourtny Garrett, President and CEO of Downtown Dallas, Inc., will leave her job at the end of the year to lead the Downtown Denver Partnership.

Garrett’s 20 years with the company has not only changed the perception of the city center, it has also changed reality: a successful city center has to be more than shiny buildings and long-standing institutions. It has to be a place to walk, to live, to cycle – even a place to raise your family.

With the strength of the business and art communities backing this ideal, Garrett has led a collaboration that has transformed downtown into a truly liveable neighborhood.

She has campaigned for change for so long – creating parks, schools, and transformative projects. Not to mention, as former Mayor Mike Rawlings put it, “Kourtny made downtown for fun.”

Numbers tell a lot about the development of $ 11 billion over the past 20 years:

In 1996, 200 residents lived in downtown Dallas; today there are 13,000. 40 empty buildings were brought to life. When the last two park projects are completed, the city center will have grown by 23 hectares of green space in 15 years.

Not even a pandemic shook the $ 4 billion of development still under way at the heart of the city.

Downtown Dallas, Inc. President and CEO Kourtny Garrett congratulated a class from the Dallas Police Academy during their graduation ceremony at the Inspiring Body of Christ Church in Dallas in January 2020.(Brandon Wade / special article)

The thousands of us who work, live, or gamble downtown don’t need these numbers to know Garrett’s influence. But the meaning of their departure extends to everyone in North Texas.

Downtowns are the heartbeat of American cities. They’re not just jobs – although that was a reality in Dallas two decades ago. Downtowns are the barometers for the health of cities.

Downtown Dallas, Inc.’s role during its 63-year existence has been to maintain where the heart of the city leads. Garrett gave what could have been a “Rah-Rah, Downtown” job a youthful and authentic face.

So why should she leave now – when there is still so much ahead of them for downtown Dallas? Well, beyond the obvious, who in Texas doesn’t love Colorado?

Garrett’s roots in Dallas are deep, but Denver was originally home. She was born there and still has family ties to the city. This is also a deeply personal life change for Garrett, her husband John, and their 9-year-old twins.

We all reach forks in the road, places where both paths are good. Sometimes we just need new landscapes. Perhaps a change will refresh our perspective.

Garrett told me that leaving was an excruciating decision, “but it is a time for us as a family to take new steps.”

Dallas and Denver have both proven to be resilient, growing cities that continue to attract talent and investment – even in a pandemic, Garrett said.

She believes the past two decades have laid a solid foundation for downtown Dallas. “Now we are in this great moment of transition. The projects and people coming in the next 20 years will give us a new definition of what downtown will be. “

Kourtny Garrett in Main Street Garden, which opened in 2009 and is managed and maintained by Downtown Dallas, Inc.(Elias Valverde II / employee photographer)

One of the city guides with a seat at the forefront of Garrett’s work is Veletta Lill, one of Dallas’s foremost art, historic preservation, and downtown art advocates.

“It changed the face of downtown Dallas,” Lill told me as we discussed Garrett’s departure. “She put her heart in the city center. She wasn’t just – no insult to boys in suits – a person with a slogan. “

“It was part of the huge changes downtown as it went from a place people run away from to a place people flock to,” Lill said.

“That’s Kourtny Garrett’s mark.”

Downtown is in Garrett’s DNA – she lived downtown, she worked downtown, she married downtown, she raised her twins downtown until circumstances forced a move to North Oak Cliff in late 2018.

Even this move was painful for Garrett, who needed a bigger home but one where she “could still see the skyline from my kitchen window”.

I have known Kourtny for years and can testify that, like the best servants in our town, she has difficulties with sentences that contain the word “I”.

Over the weekend, she was repeatedly urged to show off a little about herself, saying, “I’m very proud to help make downtown a real place.”

There are plenty of examples to back that up, but the most important thing today – especially for our next group of executives – is a little bit of Garrett’s unconventional path to town planning.

Her family moved to Rowlett from the Denver area when she was in fifth grade and she grew up as “the typical suburban kid.” A high school sponsored trip to Europe – one she barely scraped the money to get – changed her life.

She remembers standing on a street corner in Rome and “felt this connection in my soul to the energy, hectic pace and surprise of everything. I just wanted to go and go on. “

Garrett had no idea how that intersected with a career, so she studied communications in college. A happy internship in London’s business district sealed the deal: “I knew then that it was important to me to create real, authentic urban centers,” she said.

The morning after vandalism broke out amid peaceful protests in downtown Dallas on May 29 last year, Kourtny Garrett was out on the streets helping clean broken glass from damaged storefronts.(Juan Figueroa / employee photographer)

Garrett’s first job at Downtown Dallas, Inc. – when she was only 23 – was a tough endeavor: creating excitement and activity in a place that had none. Her earliest memories are the production of concerts at Pegasus Plaza – picking up lights, loading fences on her brother’s truck bed and booking bands from friends.

Her first major contract, the Main Street Retail Activation program, used public funds to bring small businesses to formerly boarded-up ground floor buildings.

Numerous basic tactics eventually culminated in Downtown Dallas, Inc.’s first 360 plan in 2011, unanimously approved by the city council and a pivotal moment in building public-private partnerships.

Garrett’s promotions in the organization culminated in her getting the top job in 2016. A year later, an updated 360 plan again won full council approval and resulted in even more new projects throughout the city center.

She appreciates the building that has rejuvenated the inner city, but quality of life is most important to her.

Garrett, for example, took 10 years to get the Dallas ISD to open a downtown school and helped write the proposal that eventually led to the opening of Downtown Montessori at Ida B. Wells Academy in Fall 2020.

Of the 100 employees at Downtown Dallas, Inc., most are assigned to the Clean Team, Public Safety, and Homeless Services. Garrett is also extremely handy – whether it’s working with City Hall on public order or helping small businesses with sidewalk cafes.

The morning after vandalism erupted alongside racial justice protests in downtown Dallas in 2020, Garrett was out cleaning up glass. When the city center was the scene of a fatal ambush by police officers in 2016, it was there the next day to comfort some of the hardest hit.

Before heading to Denver, one of the top items on Garrett’s to-do list is to support the area’s new rapid relocation effort for the city’s homeless people who she believes may be the most impactful in the country.

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said in a statement on Garrett’s departure: “With a steady hand, a sharp mind and a kind heart, Kourtny helped us transform our vital city center and gave us a better understanding of our place in it.”

“It is a testament to Kourtny’s leadership skills that she has gone from being one of the few people who beat the drum for downtown to one of many.”

Mike Rawlings, who ran Garrett’s most of the time as Mayor of Downtown Dallas, Inc., said he wasn’t surprised we were losing her “because she did a great job here.”

“She was clever about the details and she was interested in the big story for a long time,” Rawlings told me. “She understood how to build momentum and bring things together to have a huge impact on the city.”

Rawlings also referred to what I will remember most about Garrett: the good example she sets for future leaders.

“You see these young women come and take these CEO jobs and be so successful,” said Rawlings. “That is important for our city.”

Amid my “say it ain’t so” shock over the weekend, Garrett repeatedly reminded me that Downtown Dallas, Inc. is much, much bigger than any other leader.

Veletta Lill put it best when we later discussed the bittersweet news: “Downtown Dallas continues to grow and prosper. Just like Kourtny. It has grown, it has prospered, it has outdone itself. “

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