ESTES PARK – Kara Franker, who left her job in tourism promotion in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, three years ago to become CEO of Visit Estes Park, will step down next month and return to Florida, she told her staff and Estes Park town councilors late Thursday.
Her resignation will take effect on September 6, coinciding with the start of the annual Longs Peak Scottish-Irish Festival, the town’s most attended event of the year.
“I have accepted a position as President and CEO of Visit Florida Keys and Key West,” she told Estes Park officials. “This is the right step for me and my family at this time.”
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A selection committee had Franker appointed top candidate to head the tourism agency, which has an annual budget of $60 million, compared to Visit Estes Park’s $9.7 million, and promotes visitation to the entire long chain of islands stretching from the mainland south of Miami west-southwest to Key West. The Monroe County Tourist Development Council voted July 30 to offer Franker the position, and she decided to resign from her post in Estes Park after contract negotiations with the council were successful.
In her letter to Estes Park officials, Franker wrote, “It has been a great honor and privilege to serve the community in this capacity, and I hope you will look back on our time together as productive. I am sure you will. I have learned so much from each of you and will carry that with me as I go along. Thank you for working so diligently with us on our many ambitious endeavors over the past three years. I believe we have much to be proud of, and I love Estes Park.”
Franker said Sean Jurgens, chairman of the Visit Estes Park board of directors, will convene a board meeting via Zoom next Thursday at 2 p.m. to discuss appointing an interim CEO and hiring a permanent successor to Franker.
“In addition,” she said, “he asked me if I would chair the annual joint board meeting before I leave to review the VEP operating plan with all governing bodies. I will be happy to do so and will contact representatives from both the city and county to see if that is possible.”
Mayor Gary Hall noted that Franker was hired to lead Visit Estes Park in 2021 after previous director Eric Lund was asked to resign over unspecified “personnel issues.” He told BizWest late Thursday that Franker “got into a really difficult situation. VEP was falling apart. She not only got the ship back on course, but she made it better.”
Hall reiterated this observation in his email response to Franker’s resignation letter.
“The organization was in real trouble a few years ago and you helped it to get much better,” Hall wrote. “And you did so much to promote Estes and spread positive messages throughout the year.”
“You have endured through crises and times of peace and have been a consistent, strong and consistent force in driving our marketing efforts. You have made more progress in the off-seasons of these years than in many years before. And you do it all with relentless positivism. You have brought modern tools and so many new ideas to the forefront. You have built a staff of experts who share the same goals for Estes.
“Visit Florida Keys is fortunate to have you as CEO,” Hall wrote to Franker, “and I expect you to do much more good work for them, and in a more tropical location than Estes.”
Since taking the helm of Visit Estes Park, the local marketing district for the tourism-dependent town at the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, in May 2021, Franker has led a successful campaign to raise the lodging tax to fund worker housing and related child care. She also oversaw the relocation and expansion of the quirky Frozen Dead Guy Days festival from its original location in Nederland to Estes Park to boost the town’s economy during an otherwise slow spring for visitors. She arrived as Estes Park was recovering from the effects of a devastating wildfire that had led to the town’s evacuation the previous fall and was still grappling with restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her family – her husband Jeremy, who works for the federal government, and their seven-year-old daughter Lola – did not follow her to Estes Park, but stayed at their home in Wellington, a city in Palm Beach County. So Franker commuted back and forth between Colorado and Florida for three years.
A native of Olathe, Kansas, Franker brought a diverse portfolio of experiences to Estes Park: She was a journalist, prosecutor, business owner, marketing manager, wife and mother, and even a cheerleader for the National Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs. Before taking the job at Visit Estes Park, she spent two years as senior vice president of marketing and communications at Visit Lauderdale, a company that promoted tourism in Broward County north of Miami with an annual budget of $30 million. From 2012 to 2019, she ran the communications company Kara Franker Inc.
