[OMS_MANAGERS] Downtown Bend Business Association News - April 6th, 2018

Fri Apr 6 13:01:26 PDT 2018

March was a busy month at the Downtown Bend Business Association. As our new Executive Director got settled in we continued...

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What's new in Downtown Bend
New Businesses:
* Village Interiors (http://www.downtownbend.org/portfolio/village-interiors/) 750 NW Lava
* The Lemon Tree (https://lemontreebend.com/) - 718 NW Franklin

Upcoming Events:
* Art Walk (https://www.facebook.com/events/172206353399916/) - April 6th
* Earth Day Parade (https://envirocenter.org/tec-events/earth-day-fair/) - April 21st
* Bend Marathon (https://www.bend-marathon.com/) - April 22nd

Our First Annual Easter Event = Success
Thank you to all of the participating businesses who made our first family-friendly Downtown Bend Easter event a huge hit!  We had hundreds of families join us to create memorable moments in Downtown Bend!  Visit our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/downtownbend/) to see some great photos.

The EID
Over the past month, we've been working closely with the City of Bend, as well as meeting with all of our Downtown Bend building owners and property managers to ensure that the funding for the DBBA continues.  This funding is necessary to continue to increase the vitality of Downtown Bend.

Learn More (http://www.downtownbend.org/about-us/the-2018-eid/)
DBBA Board Elections
Now is your time to shine!  Join the DBBA Board of Directors and have a powerful impact on shaping the future of Downtown Bend! Directors serve two-year terms and oversee staff, policy, direction, and budget of the organization.  If you are interested in growing and shaping Downtown, Apply today!
Learn More (http://www.downtownbend.org/9171-2/)

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The DBBA – March News
March was a busy month at the DBBA.  As our new Executive Director got settled in we continued to rush forward into Spring in Downtown Bend.  We had a few light snow showers this month, and our snow removal crews hit the streets at 7am to make sure that an ADA accessible path was cleared throughout the entire EID, including a 4-foot path down sidewalks, all ADA ramps and parking spaces, and all crosswalks.  Our daily sidewalk-sweeping and trash pick-up crews enjoyed a few beautiful sunny spring mornings.  As we approach summer and move staff around internally, we are looking for two new daily cleaners to add to our crew.  If you know someone who is interested in the job, please have them apply directly at ** downtownbend at gmail.com (mailto:downtownbend at gmail.com)
.

We are happy to report a continuing ~99% full occupancy rate in Downtown Bend, and we welcomed two new businesses to Downtown in March: The Lemon Tree at 718 NW Franklin and Village Interiors at 750 NW Lava.

Our efforts to bring more people into Downtown continues to thrive.  This month we continued to see our Mt. Bachelor Ski Groups, and we added our Heritage Conference attendees to our Group Discounts Program.  If you are a business, and you’d like to learn more about our programs to help downtown businesses succeed, ** click here (http://downtownbend@gmail.com)
.   We also hosted our first ever Easter event in Downtown Bend including a scavenger hunt, Easter bunny, egg hunt, free art project, free yoga and family friendly live-music.  It was a huge hit!

On the transportation front, we continue to work closely with the City of Bend, CET and Ride Bend to bring back the free Ride Bend bus this summer.  We also continue to advocate within our local transportation groups to keep the Hawthorne exit open as Bend builds a plan to rethink our streets including Hwy 97.  In addition, we established a parking committee and held our first meeting –which was a huge success.

We added two new office volunteers to our staff, Danielle and Barbara.  We think they are great, and we can’t wait for you to have the opportunity to work more closely with them.  Danielle is primarily helping with event planning and production and Barbara is working to increase our internal organization and establish effective processes and procedures.  We are honored that we had about 50 hours of volunteer work donated to our organization in March.

It was business as usual with our marketing efforts including all our frequent social media and website updates, and our ever-expanding Downtown Dollars program (currently almost to 90K!).  In addition, we moved closer to launching our rebrand with our new logo and stories.  We’re pretty excited!  Continued efforts were made to move forward our fundraising efforts, Bend Cares project, improved waste management in downtown, alley clean-up, the 86 project, Downtown security, building new community partnerships, increasing EID communication, increasing direct business visits, and our upcoming board elections.  We are thrilled to have so much going on!

Looking ahead, we are planning our 2^nd annual Downtown Bend Volunteer Spring Clean-Up event.  Last year we had 60+ community members helping us spruce up Downtown for our Summer visitors, and we are excited to host this event again!  We are also having our first ever Downtown Bend Celebration Night on Thursday, May 24^th from 5:30 to 8pm and you’re invited, so save the date and watch for a formal invitation to arrive shortly.

If you have any questions or requests, please feel free to reach out to us at 541-788-3628 or ** downtownbend at gmail.com (mailto:downtownbend at gmail.com)
.  You can also visit our website, ** www.downtownbend.org (http://www.downtownbend.org)
, for more information.

DOWNTOWN BEND BUSINESS ASSOCIATION
A private nonprofit organization
working to improve the vitality of Downtown Bend
** Request more information on our organization (mailto:downtownbend at gmail.com?subject=Information%20Request&body=Please%20call%20or%20email%20me%20at%20your%20earliest%20convenience.%20%20%0AMy%20number%20is%3A%20%20%0AMy%20email%20is%3A)
** Volunteer for Downtown Bend (mailto:downtownbend at gmail.com?subject=Volunteer&body=I%20would%20like%20to%20volunteer%2C%20please%20contact%20me%20at%20your%20earliest%20convenience.%20%20My%20contact%20information%20is%3A)

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