The Downtown Denver Partnership on Thursday announced ¡Viva! Streets Denver, an annual business promotion event encouraging non-motorized modes of transportation, is canceled for 2024.

The Denver Streets Partnership is calling for Mayor Mike Johnston and the Downtown Denver Partnership to “establish a reasonable permitting process,” to allow the event to go on this year, a news release from Denver Street’s Partnership said.

The 2024 summer event series is “paused” until 2025 due to not having enough resources this year, a Downtown Denver Partnership spokesperson told The Denver Gazette.

The downtown set of events, which saw over 40,000 Denverites take part in 2023, was looking forward to its second ever four-part summer series.

“¡Viva! Streets was such a huge success in 2023 and supported many of the goals of (Johnston’s) administration, including bringing people back downtown, creating economic benefits for small businesses, and shifting Denver toward more healthy, sustainable transportation options,” Jill Locantore, executive director of Denver Street’s Partnership, told the Denver Gazette.

“It would be a real shame to lose this momentum,” she added.

The event series stretches along 3.5 miles of open downtown Denver streets, centered on Broadway and Welton Street. The Downtown Partnership built relationships with over 250 businesses along the route and hundreds of community partners that activated downtown streets during the events – thus encouraging the use of bikes and non-motorized vehicles for people to spend more time in the area.

“The 2023 event was a tremendous effort that demonstrated what community, business and public sector partnerships can bring to our city,” Kourtny Garrett, CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership, said in a statement “We learned many lessons and celebrated memorable moments. We look forward to spending the next year focused on a collective process that will build additional resources, partners and plans that will ensure ¡Viva! lives long into the future for downtown.”

The Denver Streets Partnership calls for the city to be more collaborative in solving the permitting issues.

The event series received a $250,000 grant from the Denver Regional Council of Governments, according to the Denver Street’s Partnership.

“With so many resources and partners already in place to ensure the success of the events in 2024, all we really need from the City is some creative problem solving to address the permitting issues, which in turn will generate enormous benefits for the Denver community,” Locantore said.