{"id":16083,"date":"2017-02-05T22:50:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T05:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=16083"},"modified":"2017-02-07T09:26:07","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T16:26:07","slug":"for-harmon-downtown-job-the-biggest-honor-of-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/02\/for-harmon-downtown-job-the-biggest-honor-of-my-life\/","title":{"rendered":"For Harmon, downtown job ‘the biggest honor of my life’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lisa<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

During an ArtWalk exhibit\u00a0at the Downtown Billings Alliance office Friday night, Lisa Harmon chats with Greg Kreuger, her longtime colleague at the DBA.<\/p><\/div>\n

Lisa Harmon says there is no intrigue attached to her decision to step down as director of the Downtown Billings Alliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo scandal, no crisis,\u201d she said. Just math.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in my 50s and I\u2019ve probably only got one career move left,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

And she says she doesn\u2019t have a clue what she\u2019ll do next. Her plan is to stay on with the DBA until June 30, unless her successor is chosen before then, and then to see what happens.<\/p>\n

Her 12-year stint with the downtown organization, she said, has been \u201cthe biggest honor of my life and the biggest job I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since being hired as the operations manager of the Downtown Billings Partnership in 2005, that big job has included forming a Business Improvement District, under which business and property owners collectively pay for services focused on keeping the downtown clean and safe.<\/p>\n

Since 2010, as an expansion of that program, downtown property owners have paid nearly $800,000 for two police officers who work the downtown beat exclusively.<\/p>\n

In 2006 she helped launch Spare Change for Real Change<\/a>, to which people were encouraged to make donations as an alternative to supporting panhandlers, with proceeds going to programs that help homeless people and transients.<\/p>\n

The DBA also kept adding events and enlarging others\u2014including the Alive After 5 concert series, Strawberry Fest, the Purple 5K run, HarvestFest, parades and a Christmas Stroll\u2014adding up to about 50 events a year downtown. The popular downtown ArtWalk also came under the DBA’s umbrella.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>In 2015, the two downtown cops were joined by a licensed addiction counselor from the Rimrock Foundation\u2014his time downtown paid for by Spare Change for Real Change\u2014whose job was to nudge the chronic alcoholics on downtown streets into treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis organization came into being with her leadership,\u201d said Sam Merrick, who sits on two DBA boards and is also on the search committee to find Harmon\u2019s successor.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s the Pied Piper of downtown,\u201d he said. \u201cShe talks and people follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harmon, a native of Virginia Beach, Va., taught high school French and German for five years, then started a healthy-cookie company in Virginia in the late 1980s. After moving to Billings with her then-husband in 1993, Harmon re-launched the company as Montana Moon Cookies, which she ran for 10 years with her two sisters.<\/p>\n

She was ready for something new when the job with what was then called the Downtown Billings Association opened up. Her job was mainly working on business development, as an entrepreneur herself, \u201cI felt like I could really understand what it was to turn on the lights on in a business,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

There were many changes in the organization over the years, and eventually Harmon became executive director of the renamed Downtown Billings Alliance, which includes the association, the BID and the downtown partnership.<\/p>\n

Harmon gives much of the credit for the downtown\u2019s resurgence to Greg Kreuger, who has been with the DBA for 20 years and is now development director for the alliance. She said she and Kreuger were immediately compatible and have worked together closely during her years with the alliance.<\/p>\n

\"Mel\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

At the ArtWalk exhibit, Harmon hugs Mel Barbour, the DBA’s website and social media manager.<\/p><\/div>\n

They have attended hundreds of City Council meetings, she said, and Kreuger recently presented for council consideration the 285th downtown project funded by the downtown tax increment district, a funding mechanism that has aided projects ranging from a simple awning on one business to the multimillion-dollar renovation of the Northern Hotel.<\/p>\n

One aspect of Harmon\u2019s job that she was unprepared for, and which has presented the biggest challenges, is dealing with homelessness, transience, street crimes, public drunkenness and panhandling.<\/p>\n

She was the first chair of the Mayor\u2019s Committee on Homelessness, and she would later take the lead in the Community Innovations<\/a> initiative, a collaborative effort that was begun not just to \u201cdo something\u201d about problems on the street but to provide help for the people causing the problems.<\/p>\n

She was gearing up for the first Community Innovations Summit in the summer of 2014 when Mike Sample, a widely known photographer, was stabbed to death outside the downtown office of his family\u2019s philanthropic foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat hurt because it hurt the psyche of our city,\u201d Harmon said. Sample\u2019s murder was part of a wave of crime and violence that many people connected to spillover from the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota. As terrible as it was, Harmon said, it gave added impetus to the Community Innovations effort.<\/p>\n

The initiatives that grew out of that effort, including the hiring of a counselor to work the streets with the downtown cops, was widely heralded, and in 2015, on the strength of the Community Innovations program, the DBA was chosen to receive the Pinnacle Award from the International Downtown Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On that, too, Harmon is quick to give credit to others, including the Rimrock Foundation, St. Vincent DePaul, the Crisis Center and especially the Montana Tribal Leadership Council.<\/p>\n

The DBA\u2019s partnership with the tribal leadership council, she said, \u201cis an active collaboration. It is not an afterthought. I\u2019m so blessed to have been part of that work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the midst of talking about her years with the DBA, Harmon paused several times, looking mildly panicked, afraid of omitting anyone deserving of thanks or credit. She mentioned the Billings Chamber of Commerce, Big Sky Economic Development, the city\u2019s Community Development Division, and the 12 employees who work under the alliance umbrella.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the most gracious, loving, productive team I\u2019ve ever worked with,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

At one point, having bestowed thanks and praise on several individuals and organizations, Harmon said, \u201cI\u2019m not trying to sound like a politician here. That\u2019s the
\nway I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biff Hagstrom, another member of the DBA board and search committee, said Harmon will be hard to replace.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople like to get behind her because of her verve,\u201d he said. \u201cVerve is the right word.\u201d It helps that she has \u201ca really wonderful combination\u201d of right- and left-brain thinking, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s an accountant and an artist at the same time,\u201d Hagstrom said. \u201cShe inspires people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harmon said there is no perfect time to leave an organization you love, but she figures this is a fairly opportune moment, since the DBA is just starting the process of updating the 20-year-old Downtown Framework Plan<\/a>, the blueprint that jumpstarted so much of the downtown\u2019s redevelopment.<\/p>\n

It will make sense to have a new director come on just as the new elements of the updated plan are being put into effect, she said. And for all that has been accomplished in the past 12 years, there is so much more to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the nature of downtown,\u201d Harmon said. \u201cYou are never done. You are never<\/em> done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lisa Harmon says there is no intrigue attached to her decision to step down as director of the Downtown Billings Alliance. \u201cNo scandal, no crisis,\u201d she said. Just math. \u201cI\u2019m in my 50s and I\u2019ve probably only got one career move left,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,14],"tags":[5481,5482,975,5468,128,5480],"class_list":["post-16083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-billings","category-news","tag-biff-hagstrom","tag-community-innovations","tag-downtown-billings-alliance","tag-greg-kreuger","tag-lisa-harmon","tag-sam-merrick","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}