PORT ANGELES – Abundant chocolate, free coffee, cleanliness, “meter fairies.”
Ken Kelly, possibly downtown Victoria’s most enthused champion, flung a slew of ideas at the Port Angeles Business Association on Tuesday morning, just to get a conversation started.
Kelly is general manager of the Downtown Victoria Business Association, a coalition that in just five years of life has introduced numerous new ways of promoting a core business district.
Victoria’s perks
There’s “Wake Up, Victoria,” a giveaway of free coffee for downtown workers every fall; the Christmas “Joy and Light in the City” season during which Santa Claus and helpers hand out 10,000 pieces of chocolate; workshops on old-fashioned window-decorating; a Clean Team that washes sidewalks and scrubs graffiti off walls; and the “meter fairies” who flit around downtown each Saturday.
The sprites, Kelly explained, slip money into parking meters to give people a surprise extra 15 minutes to shop or dine downtown. They leave cards saying “You have been visited by the meter fairy,” Kelly added — and they save people about $4,000 per year in parking fines.
Benefits business, city
The city of Victoria forgoes that revenue, he said, in an example of a partnership that benefits both merchants and city coffers, since the gifts ultimately give people a downtown experience they like to repeat.
The Downtown Victoria Business Association, on its face, doesn’t look comparable to its counterpart here, the Port Angeles Downtown Association, whose executive director, Barbara Frederick, attended Tuesday’s PABA meeting.
The Canadian group’s 2010 budget is about $850,000 funded by a levy, Kelly said, while PADA’s budget this year is $95,450, and Victoria’s population of 77,000 dwarfs Port Angeles’ 19,260.
But instead of dwelling on disparities, Kelly and Frederick chose to talk about how the two cities can work together.
The problems downtowns have — and their solutions — are often the same, said Frederick. They deal with parking shortages, compete with malls and the Internet and benefit from a spirit of solidarity.
Port Angeles has attractions Victoria doesn’t, of course, and it can be promoted as “a brilliant place to get away to,” Kelly added.
Olympic National Park is one for example, and later this month, another movie episode in the Twilight saga of wildly popular vampire stories will rise.
“As ‘New Moon’ gets unveiled in the coming days,” Kelly said, “both of us are benefiting.”
The second “Twilight” movie opens Nov. 20 at the Lincoln Theater in downtown Port Angeles, Frederick said, and while it will also play at Victoria’s cinemas, only Port Angeles has spots like Bella Italia, the downtown restaurant where “Twilight’s” hero and heroine had their first date.
And only Port Angeles’ highway signs point the way to Forks, the town where Bella and Edward’s romance flowered.
‘Be accommodating’
At the same time, Kelly offered practical advice for Port Angeles merchants.
He urged them to accept Canadian currency, since in today’s climate, “you’ve got to try to be as accommodating as possible . . . to generate as much goodwill as possible.”
And to boost any downtown’s prosperity, cooperation is magic, Kelly said. So he and his association are out there asking businesses: “What projects can we work on together?”
Frederick said she took away several ideas she wants to try in Port Angeles, such as the “Wake Up, Victoria” gift certificates the downtown Victoria association provides for downtown workers to get free coffee at participating cafes.
When it comes to new promotions, Kelly added, “we are only limited by our own respective imaginations . . . there are tremendous cross-benefits in continuing to exchange ideas.”
Frederick, for her part, said she hopes to schedule regular meetings with the downtown Victoria association to brainstorm ways to promote not just the downtowns, but the whole cities.
“It’s so easy to walk on the ferry and walk off,” Kelly said, “and enjoy what both of our communities have to offer.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
