General notes: From last month’s report – Sandy Mountain Festival. Music Fair and Feast. Summer Sounds. Shakespeare in the Park. Wine in the Woods. The Brewgrass Festival. Hood to Coast. Fiber contractors trenching through people’s yards. Hiring a new RARE coordinator. Oy!
So here’s how it all played out, to the best of my knowledge:
- Sandy Mountain Festival: I have not seen any actual numbers from our friends on the Mountain Festival Committee, but everything I have heard unofficially seems to indicate that turnout in 2014 was not as robust as 2013. Part of this had to do with the 90+ temperatures over the weekend of the festival, but the rest is a mystery as the Festival Committee did plenty of advertising both in and out of the area.
- Music Faire and Feast: Our preliminary numbers showed that we were off just a hair (<5%) from last year’s numbers, and we believe the weather was the primary factor in this. However, while we were off quite a bit on Friday night, Saturday night turned out to be our saving grace. We did have two food vendors (the noodle lady and the shave ice guy) leave during the day on Saturday in violation of their contract because they believed that Saturday was going to be as slow as Friday and they didn’t want to be bothered. The remaining food vendors (including Bunsenbrewer, who was there promoting and selling food only – we are working to see if he can sell beer next year) cleaned house Saturday night, and those two vendors that left are now barred from all future events for proving themselves to be unreliable even while under contract. The lack of foresight displayed by some of these vendors is truly jaw-dropping.
- Shakespeare/WitW/Brewgrass: All three of these events showed growth in attendance from last year according to unofficial counts by Nancy Enabnit, Katie Murphy and Carol Cohen. Wine in the Woods had over 200 people – by far the biggest growth shown by any event so far this year. The Brewgrass Festival was also the rollout of new lighting in Meinig Park paid for by Clackamas County Tourism & Cultural Affairs’ Community Partnership Grant. This is the same grant that paid for the Otto’s Ski Shop/City of Sandy mountain bike rental program. Please notice the new lighting at the park entrance and on each of the small non-profit gazebos facing the main stage – these downward facing fixtures will provide lighting on the stairways and the ground around the gazebos so people can make their way around the park more safely in the dark. Also, there are 3 new 500-watt canned lights shining on the stage, adding 1,500 watts to the 600 watts already there. This makes the performers much easier to see (especially from a distance) and improves the overall quality of the stage.
- Hood to Coast: Coming to a state highway near you on August 22-23. Last year was markedly better than years previous with regard to team behavior. According to Sandy PD there were no major incidents last year and only a couple of minor ones. Let’s hope this keeps up!
- Fiber contractors trenching through people’s yards: Can’t wait ‘til they turn it on! SandyNet techs tell me that people are still complaining about the paint on the ground, but considering that the law requires this of anyone planning to dig in a ROW, not sure what they can do to calm people down. Time will tell, I guess…
- Hiring a new RARE coordinator: Just heard back from RARE, and it appears that our number one choice will in fact be our next coordinator. Jennifer Marks will be doing some training with RARE, and is planning to be here the second week of September. Meanwhile, Aubrey is leaving us on the 13th of August, so stop by and bid her farewell. A little birdie told me that she has an excellent chance of becoming the Estacada Development Organization’s new executive director in the near future. Watch this space…
Commercial Properties (vacancies, new businesses, etc.):
Dolly’s Pet Shoppe: As you have probably heard by now, Marlene DePaolo was injured in a car accident on Bluff Road last week and was LifeFlighted to Emmanuel Hospital in critical condition. She has since been stabilized, but has about a dozen major injuries to her body (mostly broken bones). Dolly’s owner and daughter Anna was planning on holding a second grand opening over the last weekend, and was understandably distraught enough over the situation to consider closing up shop for awhile. The Sandy Area Chamber of Commerce and this office sprang into action to help – I convinced Anna to stay open and to focus on the grand opening to keep her mind off of the situation, and her suppliers donated a ton of product to raffle off. Khrys Jones at the Chamber, myself and most of the SACC board has stopped in at various times and helped her setup, stock shelves and generally keep things moving. The 2nd grand opening went very well, and although she has not done the numbers yet for the event, she knows business was very brisk over the weekend.
The latest on Marlene is that she continues to improve, and is now out of the ICU. Recovery time is estimated at 1 year. So if you have a free minute and happen to be downtown, stop in and give Anna some words of encouragement.
Barbara Sah Properties: Barbara is not quite ready to rent out her remaining properties. A couple of them still need bathrooms or bathroom ADA upgrades, and the ADA was not a variable she had to deal with when she last owned the building. Short-term financing seems to be the issue, but she has no interest in borrowing. She is, however, at least interested in learning more about how to become a fiber reseller to the tenants in her building. This is something that I need to discuss in more detail with SandyNet staff when they are available to speak with other city employees again, which I’m told will probably be sometime in 2017.
Mike Maiden Properties: Still need to talk to Mike. Later in the month, most likely.
Jody Argue Properties: Moving forward with construction of the interior of the building. Have met with Jody and Terre a couple of times, and this seems to be coming along. Still don’t know what her plans are for the space, but has hinted toward general retail. More to come…
Tamale Factory: There appears to be some sort of turf war going on at this business between the Oregon Dept of Agriculture and Clackamas County Health. Apparently Antonio’s ODA certification is in question, and Ms. Leben with the County’s Health Dept is trying to become the certifying authority. I have been trying to get a hold of Antonio to find out what’s going on, but he hasn’t been in the Sandy store much lately and my schedule has been a bit loaded as well. I am also looking to get a more detailed answer to the Mayor’s question to him about what exactly was “difficult and expensive” about setting up shop here. I have a feeling his concerns revolve around the grease trap that was required for his business, but I don’t want to put words in his mouth. More to come….
Crawlers: This business was given a temporary business license last week pending final inspection of their plumbing permit. Last I heard, the deadline for this final was 8/11, and Terre had not heard a word from the contractor working on this business. Terre was really hoping that he didn’t have to shut them down, as the problem seems to lie with the contractor and not the business owner. This is not the first time the contractor has let them down, I’m told…
Sandy Main Street: We have a winner in the contest to find Aubrey’s 2014-2015 RARE replacement! Our top candidate, Jennifer Marks, has accepted the assignment and will be joining Sandy Main Street as our new coordinator during the second week of September. As Aubrey is leaving us on August 13, that means I’m going to be on my own for a month, so I ask for your patience and understanding over the next handful of weeks as I try to run this popsicle stand by myself. Aubrey is looking for work and has to this date put out almost 50 resumes, some of them for some impressive organizations (Greater Portland Inc, The Nature Conservancy, etc.) I have no doubt that she will be either running for Congress or running the Oregon Food Bank one day…
First Friday: August’s event was, unfortunately, one of the slowest on record. Part of the reason for this was daytime temps in the mid-90’s, which seemed to scare away a lot of our younger participants (didn’t see too many kids this time around) The one business that seemed to be going gangbusters was Dolly’s Pet Shoppe, as they planned their 2nd grand opening to coincide with First Friday. We are still tabulating the winners from the Best Poker Hand contest, but we only had 19 participants overall. The bottom line here though is….sometimes you can do everything right and still fail due to variables outside of your control. If only we could control the weather… 🙂
Project work:
Nothing at the moment
Conferences/training: [OEDA Summer Conference – Redmond, OR – July 27, 28] Another grand summer conference….this time with the Oregon Economic Development Association. Only a one-day conference, but there were some good resources on economic data, urban renewal and how to use UR funds for downtown renewal, and a great tour of downtown Redmond and how they are rehabbing a lot of their old art deco buildings for current use. Also used this conference to build a stronger relationship with Estacada and Woodburn ED departments….relationships that may come in handy somewhere down the road.
[IEDC Training Course – Economic Development: Marketing & Attraction – Atlanta, GA – 8/13-15] I found this business recruitment course while researching the Council’s request to train me up on business recruitment. The IEDC (Intl Economic Devl Council) is the professional organization that certifies economic developers. Once you complete their series of courses and pass a fairly brutal exam, you get a professional designation of CEcD (Certified Economic Developer) and a lifetime of knowledge in economic development. Whether or not I pursue this course in my ongoing training is an open question, as the courses are not offered locally very often and are reasonably expensive. However, this training seems to be EXACTLY what I need right now. I will give a detailed report of my experience in next month’s report. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this trip…. 🙂
[ELGL#14 Planning Meeting – June] Will be getting together with this group after Atlanta to do a walk-through of the conference site, and have been tasked with putting together a Pinterest site for the conference. Not exactly sure what that entails, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out soon enough…