Friday, November 04, 2011

Planned activities for Holiday Fest on Saturday, November 26.

As I've had a couple of requests asking what local activities would be occurring in New Albany during the weekend after Thanksgiving, I thought it useful to print the following. Although Stefanie intended it as a memo to merchants, it's a more comprehensive preview of "Holiday Fest" components than what currently is posted on DNA's site. None of this takes into account Plaid Friday, the direct indie response to the egregious excesses of Black Friday, and which is not part of the DNA/city event card.

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Hello Fellow Merchants!

Holiday Fest will be here in four short weeks! We hope each of you will be involved in the festivites of the day. Please take a few minutes to read through this email, and respond to me how you would like to participate in Holiday Fest 2011 - Thank you in advance!

What is Holiday Fest?
It is a community event sponsored by Develop New Albany and the City of New Albany designed to bring residents, friends, and guests to our home town to discover all our shops, restaurants and businesses by moving people through our downtown and uptown areas of New Albany. As darkness settles in everyone is invited to gather at the City Christmas Tree near State and Market streets to "Light Up" the tree, medians and surrounding buildings. There are many different activities offered throughout the day that we hope all ages will find appealing. The key activities are:

The Jingle Walk Wine, Shops and Hops is our fund raising activity which helps generate the money to help cover the costs of Holiday Fest along with the budgeted amount from our Develop New Albany members and the City's. We pair shops with wineries to promote tasting, shopping, and buying, all bringing traffic in to our local shops. This event is geared towards 21 year and older participants.

The Scavenger hunt is a free activity to promote traffic into local shops geared to any age.

The YMCA hosts Santa Clause, a free toy give a way, activities for kids and a secret shopping area for children to buy gifts by themselves for their families. This activity is geared towards our 12 and under guests.

The "light up" is located at MainSource bank parking lot on the corner of State and Market Streets. The City tree along with the outline of downtown buildings will be "turned on" that evening. This is where all activities gather at the end of the day for toys, prize winners and fun!

After light up, everyone is encouraged to check out the shops and restaurants that they missed during the day.

Now that you know a little more about Holiday Fest, what we would like from your business is:

Decorate your business! Matt Denison, Micky Thompson, Dave Barksdale and the Fire Department (when available) will be outlining the tops of buildings with holiday lights and will be happy to coordinate hanging extra lights at your business if you would like. Please contact Matt at mdenison@cityofnewalbany.com to schedule a time.

Volunteer to help test lights (week of November 1st), hang lights or help out the day of the event!

Donate a prize for the Jingle Walk or Scavenger Hunt! Each donor will be listed in the Tribune insert for Holiday Fest for donated prizes, if you let us know what you are giving by November 5th - thank you!

Jingle Walk shops have been coordinated, however we need more locations for the Scavenger Hunt. Each business is asked to provide a small item to give away to each person. The item should relate to your business (ex: Strandz Salon is giving away bobby pins), we ask that your business is open from 2-5:00 pm. If you are not a Develop New Albany member, there will be a small charge to participate but you can apply that towards your membership if you would like! (If it was not for our Develop New Albany members we would not be able to budget the money to buy lights and put on this event - thank you members!)

SAVE the date - Saturday November 26th 2-6:30 pm

Please contact Stefanie Griffith with any questions 502.645.6256

Thanks again for your help and have a Happy Halloween!

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