Greetings!
We hope this email finds you healthy and safe. We are so grateful to still be operating during this unprecedented time. Like many of you, we have lost our core funding and as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization we are not eligible for many of the CARES disaster funding options. Most of our funding consists of income from events and membership. As you know, the major events have been canceled until the second half of the year at minimum, and membership is at all time low considering the financial hardships many of our members are experiencing. However, we will continue to persevere and do everything we can to support our local businesses by sharing your information and by keeping you as informed as possible.
If there is any way we could better support you during this time, please do not hesitate to reach out.
We would like to express our deep grief for and support for George Floyd's family and community. Everyone has a role to play in standing up and speaking out against racism and inaction, we as individuals and as a team are committed to working with our leaders and community in addressing social justice and equity. It is our right to speak out and protest and we encourage all to do so peacefully and in a way that honors the memories of those who have fallen.
Thank you for your continued support of the Petaluma Downtown Association, remember we are all
in this together and look forward to better times ahead.
Take care
Marie, Ty & Mariah
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Spring Antique Faire - Cancelled
March brought many tough decisions, such as the decision to cancel the Spring Antique Faire. Although we were devastated to have to cancel such a beloved event, your safety and the safety of our community is our utmost priority.
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Butter & Egg Days Parade - Postponed
Although we do not have a new confirmed date for our beloved Butter & Egg Days Festival and Parade, we are still holding onto postponing for the second half of this year.
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Art & Garden - Cancelled
We are heartbroken to cancel such a beloved community event. But we look forward to next years Art & Garden Festival where we can come together safely to celebrate all things Petaluma.
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Hey Petaluma, We're Here For You!
One highlight to the Shelter in Place order was the opportunity to create a deeper connection with our merchants. We created a campaign called "Hey Petaluma, We're Here For You!" where we safely filmed our merchants reminding the community that they are still here.
Thank you to all the merchants who took the time to meet with us to make this happen.
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We have been busy making many updates to our new website! Please take the time to explore our page with the many business and financial resources, new photos and more! Visit our website
HERE!
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In partnership with the City of Petaluma and the Petaluma Downtown Association BID and PTID (Petaluma Tourism Improvement District), the Downtown Streets Team will launch new Petaluma program which is a win-win program providing a path out of homelessness
and the much needed cleaning of creeks and downtown streets along the way.
The Team Members will consist of unhoused individuals in exchange for a non-cash basic needs stipend, employment services and case management. The Team Members will remove litter and debris in project areas, respond to special cleaning requests and more. This will allow Team Members to take on leadership roles and reconstruct proper working habits allowing them to successfully reenter the workforce and find housing opportunities.
Meetings are expected to begin in June, preparing the Team Members to begin cleaning the streets as early as July! After 4 years, we are thrilled to watch this new program flourish in our beautiful town of Petaluma.
CLICK HERE
for more info.
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Social Media
As COVID-19 sprung the closure of our businesses, we turned to social media in efforts to help support and advertise what makes Petaluma so unique.
- Instagram: Since we began using Instagram as an additional avenue of information, we have grown our following by 700+ followers, totaling to over 2,500. We have used Instagram for daily updates on businesses, as well as highlighting special offerings. We are currently working with our downtown merchants to host an Instagram Giveaway, bringing traffic and growth to their social media sites. Follow us! @petalumadowntown
- #LoveLumaGiveaway: For the month of June, we are coordinating two Instagram Giveaways with a dozen downtown merchants. Stay tuned on our Instagram page to participate and your chance to win!
- Facebook: Unfortunately, we were victims of an extensive hack and temporarily lost the access to our pages. Prior to this incident, we managed 4 Facebook accounts: Sonoma County Home Brewer's Competition, Petaluma's Art & Garden Festival, Petaluma's Butter & Egg Days Parade, and the Petaluma Downtown Association. Unfortunately, as a result, we have lost the Home Brewer's page and are still unable to access our most important page: PDA. This has been extremely detrimental to our mission of providing information, resources and updates to our community. Administrators need to protect their own pages as hackers can permanantly delete your page, hence you then lose your business pages. With access to our pages, these individuals were also able to violate our credit card that was used for facebook ads.
- Lessons to Learn: We encourage all of you to routinely change your social media passwords and email passwords associated with those accounts. Under your settings, there is an option to download all material on your Facebook account, so it doesn't get lost in the event this happens. It is also important to not leave your credit card info in any facebook account if you pay for ads. Facebook is extremely hard to get a hold of when it comes to customer service, so please take the necessary steps to prevent this from happening to your personal or business account.
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We're in Stage 2, What Does That Mean?
While we have began moving through Stage 2 of the Resilience Roadmap, other counties have been moving at a much faster rate. As of May 23, Sonoma County expanded the list of businesses and activities able to operate. Here is what's available during this time:
- Outdoor Dining: Any restaurant, food facility, brewery, bar, pub, craft distillery, winery or tasting room is now allowed to operate outdoors if they offer sit down meals. The alcohol-based tasting rooms are able to provide meals by contract with a separate vendor.
- Park Access: You are now able to drive to nearby parks in Petaluma. Drinking fountains, dog parks, playgrounds, skate parks and picnic areas remain closed. Shollenberger Park is the only Petaluma park where restrooms are available.
- Retail Shopping: Retail stores are able to offer curbside pickup, delivery and shipping.
- Childcare: Summer camp programs, childcare and other educational or recreational programs for less than 24 hours are permitted.
- Ceremonies: Graduations and religious activities are allowed to take place with household members only, attending in closed motorized vehicles.
- Libraries: Open for curbside pickup.
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ALERT!
Sonoma County health officer set to fully reopen restaurants, stores for indoor shopping, churches by Saturday, June 6th.
Barring a spike in coronavirus cases or people needing hospital care for the highly contagious infectious disease, Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase said Tuesday she plans to reopen a big portion of economic activity across the county by Saturday.
Mase would move to allow the resumption of indoor dining at restaurants, wineries and brewpubs, in-store shopping, barbershops and hair salons. Also, churches could again welcome inside up to 100 people for religious services
CLICK HERE
!
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New Requirements for Employees Take Effect June 1
Per the most recent Amendment to the County Health Order, starting Monday June 1 employers will be
required
to monitor and track employee health. The County of Sonoma has partnered with IBM to create an app to streamline this new process. If your business is not equipped to use an app, you will be able to use an alternative system.
CLICK HERE
for more information on the new app and answers to questions about monitoring and tracking employees.
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WEBINAR - Restaurant and Retail Lease Negotiations During COVID 19 RA-R
Hosted by SBDC
Date: June 4th
Time: 11 am - 12:30 pm
No Fee
Come and learn from the experts why it is necessary for tenants to start dialogues with their landlords regarding renegotiating their leases to plan for long term survival during the COVID era.
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Petaluma Free Range
The City of Petaluma has designed a new program, Petaluma Free Range, to continue to support retailers and restaurants in their outdoor expansion. They have created a dedicated team to help review and expedite the permitting process for businesses wanting to expand outdoors.
The City has already approved permits for 7 businesses and have 6 more under review. There are currently 18 additional outside-the-box ideas being discussed with businesses. For more information, visit the City of Petaluma's website
HERE.
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Business Improvement District
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The Petaluma Downtown Business Improvement District (BID) is a 501 C(6) nonprofit corporation established to help market and beautify the downtown corridor and promote the common interests of Downtown businesses. Before the pandemic the committee met monthly at the Petaluma Hotel to proritize beautification projects, marketing and security.
Keller Street Garage
The BID committee is
working with Joel from Basel Ganglia Studio on designs for the stairwell walls in th
e Keller St. Garage. Joel the artist that created the "Plugged In" artwork on 1st Street is currently working on 12-15 new images for the garages stairwells. When time permits, please check out his new pieces. Additionally, we are working with the Art Committee on the expansion of the Telephone Alley garage wall Mural. The BID continues to match utility boxes and artists in creating visual art.
The BID continues to support the graffiti cleanup work by Ed Cera, who was just honored by the City Council with the first Petaluma Proud Award. Ed works tirelessly to clean up the graffiti in the downtown area and city wide. What a hero!
If you identify grafitti and need assistance in cleaning it up please call the Grafitti hotline number 776 3606 or sending us a email with the location and a picture if you can.
BID Projects & Events:
- Purchased Christmas Tree which displays in the Bank Hub window
- Paid for electricity junction box to lite up the tree in Center Park with Christmas lights
- Christmas Banners
- Painted Electrical Boxes Downtown (5 more artists have signed up to continue painting!)
- Seasonal Downtown Banners
- Provide Every Day Security Patrol from 9 pm-5 am
- Lights on three trees in Putnam Plaza and tree on corner of Washington
- Created three Historical Pedestals and producing 2 more
- Marketing Campaigns for Downtown
- Halloween Trick or Treat Trail
- Merchants Holiday Open House
- Downtown Sidewalk Sale
- Small Business Saturday
For more information on the BID please visit our
website
.
To review the most recent meeting minutes
, click
here
.
Meetings are canceled till further notice. We would welcome your input and attendance when they resume.
BID meeting located at Hotel Petaluma, in the Conversation Room, 205 Kentucky Street. The meetings are always held on the second Tuesday of the month at 8:45 am. We hope to see you there!
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Petaluma Visitors Program
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What's happening with the PVP
Many people aren’t aware that the Petaluma Visitors Program operates under the Petaluma Downtown Association. Because the historic downtown district is one of Petaluma’s strongest tourism draws, there is a lot of synergy between the two organizations. The PVP is funded by a Tourism Improvement District which is a 2% assessment on short-term room rental revenues.
Here are a few highlights of the programs managed by the PVP:
- Travel research: You might be interested in the current research from Destination Analysts. The good news is that travelers continue to feel safer about traveling and are beginning to make plans. Petaluma is well positioned to take advantage of the interest in regional travel and road trips. We’re working with our digital marketing agency on the messaging when the time is right to invite visitors to Petaluma.
- 2020 Petaluma Visitor Magazine: It is happening! The magazine went to print just as everything shut down. Stay tuned for more news very soon.
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As we stated above, membership makes up a large part of our funding as a nonprofit. We have been working tirelessly to promote our merchants. Let us promote you! We would love to have your business join our membership and take an active part of creating a vibrant downtown!
Click the button below to find out more about the benefits of being a member, or email our new Membership Coordinator, Mariah, to learn more!
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Petaluma Downtown Association
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