[OMS_MANAGERS] Downtown Street Fair - Engaging Businesses

Thu Jul 5 12:16:06 PDT 2018

Good afternoon all! I hope you had a terrific Independence Day! 

We are getting ready for our second “Third Thursday” event, and I was hoping to get your feedback on a particular challenge. One of the critiques we received about the June event was related to how few of the downtown businesses were actually open during the event. For context, Third Thursday is a “street fair” type event – we block off 8 blocks of Main St. for vendors, live music on two stages, food trucks, etc. We estimated around 4,000 attendees at the June event. Really hard to estimate, but I’d be willing to bet more than half of those don’t regularly spend time downtown.                

I am hoping to reach out to our downtown businesses in an appeal to them to keep their doors open late to take advantage of these crowds. A list of benefits will be pretty easy to put together, along with some suggestions for how the business can “participate” in Third Thursday. I plan to target the retail businesses. Restaurants, for the most part are already open, and it doesn’t really make sense for service-related businesses (insurance sales, attorneys, etc.) to remain open. 

So, I’m asking for any golden nuggets you have for encouraging businesses to remain open and at least connect with attendees, many of whom would like a coupon, a smile, a glass of lemonade … something that might bring them back downtown.  

Thanks!

W. Darin Rutledge

Executive Director

Klamath Falls Downtown Association

darin at downtownklamathfalls.org

541.539.6212

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