Claire Ami and Joe Wyatt set off from Acacia Park late Thursday morning to walk the streets of downtown Colorado Springs.
Clad in fluorescent yellow vests and backpacks, the two made their way south along Tejon Street. They walk more than six miles during an average shift on the lookout for lost tourists, businesses that need a hand or struggling residents.
"I'm very passionate about Colorado Springs and connecting with people, if they're tourists that are just in town or the homeless folks," Ami said.
The ambassadors are one aspect of the Clean & Safe Program that the Downtown Partnership of Colorado Springs recently launched. The pilot program has brought in extra security officers, public ambassadors and a new team of homeless outreach experts to lead efforts to improve the image and quality of life in downtown Colorado Springs.
The Downtown Partnership's Director of Public Safety Pat Rigdon, who used to own a downtown business, said the pilot program had gotten a warm welcome from businesses in the first three weeks that it has operated.
"I hope that what we're doing in downtown has a path to be successful. We are confident there are aspects of this that can work in other parts of town if they are successful here," Rigdon said.
The nonprofit Homeward Pikes Peak was contracted to run the outreach portion and is ramping up its training ahead of an official start date on Sept. 1. The outreach team is run by Steve Wynant, the street outreach program manager for Homeward Pikes Peak, with three other workers.
Daniel Jones has worked in different parts of the nonprofit for the last eight years. Jones had been working on the intake process for The Commons, a supportive housing project that started in 2023, when he applied to switch to the new team.
"It was managing a lot of intake cases, which can be intensive for months. This is more in the doorways, meeting with people who can't get started on the streets," Jones said.
Homeward Pikes Peak has worked with the Colorado Springs Police Department's Homeless Outreach Teams to assist homeless residents during campsite sweeps. Three outreach team members met the ambassadors Thursday before leaving to check on homeless residents in Dorchester Park, just outside the boundaries of the downtown project.
The outreach workers can connect people with housing resources that Homeward Pikes Peak operates, health care providers or other resources depending on their need.
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The outreach won't lead to immediate results for all the people they connect with. Outreach worker Gavin McCarroll said it can take several days of outreach workers talking to homeless or unwell residents and providing them water before they trust them enough to talk about their larger needs.
"It's not enough to help someone off the street and then be done. You need to address the continuum of care -- that's the current phrase for it. It's the whole housing approach," McCarroll said.
The ambassadors are 12 part-time workers who take shifts patrolling between the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum and the Colorado College campus. They have somebody on the streets Wednesday through Sunday, between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m.
The Downtown Partnership said in a news release that in the ambassadors' first two and a half weeks, they had stopped by businesses 278 times and assisted with 232 visitors. The teams have welcomed a diplomatic group from the European Union and assisted a visitor suffering from heatstroke earlier this month.
The ambassadors also take an active role in the cleanup portion of the program. As they started their shift Thursday morning, Ami and Wyatt righted a line of Lime scooters that had been knocked over and threw away trash left on the Acacia Park picnic tables. The ambassadors will also call in graffiti they find for city crews to remove.
The third aspect of the pilot program is increasing the hours for private security paid for by the Downtown Partnership. Officers from Mercurial Security Solutions are now running patrols 16 to 18 hours a day, more than double the number of hours they'd previously worked.
The Downtown Partnership is aiming for around $2 million to run the Clean & Safe pilot until the end of 2026. Rigdon said the nonprofit was more than halfway to reaching that goal.
Funding for the pilot has come from agencies including the Downtown Development Authority, the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority and Visit COS. A handful of private businesses and partners have also chipped in funding.
"We will go as long as the funding takes us, hopefully the full year, and the longer it goes it's that much better," Rigdon said.
Some downtown business leaders have pressed Colorado Springs City Council to add funding for the program in the 2026 budget. Council passed a resolution Aug. 12 recommending that half of the city's tax revenue from recreational marijuana sales be spent on the Clean & Safe Program.