Main street board members narrowed their goals from last month’s strategic planning session on Oct. 13.
“We’ll be gathering at the next meeting to set our goals as a board to work together on reaching,” said Main Street Program Director Tina Israel.
Israel had the board narrow goals from the lists of strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities they made in September’s meeting.
“Based on your votes, we’ll be looking at diversifying our downtown merchants, addressing vacant building concerns, and getting an update on the Texas Theater downtown,” explained Israel.
Israel urged her board to keep those concepts in mind for their next meeting then gave an update on end-of-year events.
“Our ‘Witches Who Wine’ event is coming up this month on Thursday, Oct. 28, downtown,” she said.
“It’s a lady’s night out with drinks, snacks and shopping before Halloween. We’re excited to offer this downtown.”
Israel updated the board on the “Christmas Around the Square” scheduled for 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18, and from 1-5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 21.
“Right now we’ve got several praise worship teams and the Bay City High School choir scheduled to provide live music Thursday night,” she added.
“We’ve also got our own medium-sized tree at the Matagorda County Museum’s ‘Festival of Trees’ exhibit, too.”
Israel added that the tree would be adorned with Camofest decorations and reminders for the January event.
“Right now, Camofest is happening rain or shine or snow,” she said.
“We’ll be rolling out and advertising reminders soon. And we’ll definitely have the speakers installed by then.”
“What about the Christmas parade?” asked board member Joan Myers.
“That is not a Main Street project and a lot of merchants don’t want to be open during the parade,” said Israel.
“I’m not going to force them either way. If they want to be open, that works and if not, they don’t have to be.”
Israel told board members that she is looking at getting more events downtown.
“We need to focus on events to draw people downtown to our merchants,” she explained.
“I’m looking into partnering with charity organizations for 5K and 10K walks downtown next year.”
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