DDI's annual economic development update, the State of Downtown Durham is on the horizon. The event will be held on Wednesday, April 19 from 4 to 6 p.m. at Brightleaf Square in the Brightleaf District, downtown's first retail and restaurant hub.

We'll share what has happened downtown over the last year – business openings and closings, new developments and big events.

This year's keynote speaker is David Downey, President and CEO of the International Downtown Association. Downey helped launch our upcoming strategic plan, Downtown Durham Blueprint: 2035, and will give an overview of the progress and the vision for the plan.

At the networking reception, our Taste of Downtown will highlight Latino and Hispanic-owned restaurants and bars, including Brunello Wine Bar, Boricua Soul, Cocoa Cinnamon, COPA, Kokí (formerly Spanglish) and Mezcalito. Brightleaf Square's Clouds Brewing will serve food and drinks as well.

Brightleaf retailers will be featured during the reception, including Bull City Art & Frame Company, Hamilton Hill Jewelry, Indio, Mill and Meadow, MODE Consignment Boutique and Unleashed.

Tickets are $80, with bundle and BID stakeholder discounts available. Click here to purchase.

Find these events and all the happenings downtown on the

Downtown Durham Event Calendar.

Deloitte is working through a concept for a new product that would help businesses onboard new talent with ease, and is looking for 3-5 downtown restaurants or retail employers that would be open to piloting the program. The pilot is free to participating businesses.

In this session, you'll learn the steps to prepare for your business to receive investment and the preparation needed to meet funding criteria.

Click here to register.

View the Traffic Report calendar online...

DDI uses technology that extrapolates the number of unique visitors and visits to downtown based on cell phone data. The figures below include those who remain in the area for a minimum of seven minutes. Residents and employees are removed. The data can be filtered for smaller areas, and comparison figures are available for previous months or years. Contact us to request a custom report.

▶ American Tobacco District

Visits

▶ Brightleaf District

▶ Central Park District

Visits Per Day

▶ City Center District

▶ Golden Belt + Mill One District

▶ Government Services District

▶ Warehouse District

Busiest Hour

The following businesses recently opened or closed in downtown Durham.

I’d normally begin this month’s article by wishing you all a happy spring, but I think spring has been here since before Valentine’s Day this year. We’ve spent the last few weeks working hard to get most of our downtown sidewalks and curbing power-washed, and we’ve made significant progress. As we are now fully into the growing season, we will still be power-washing as the seasons change, but we will now have a heightened focus on grass cutting and trimming as well as weed abatement and removal. The new battery-powered landscaping equipment we procured during the winter has been well received by the staff. They especially like the quieter operation of the new equipment.

As we start to see activity levels downtown rise back to pre-pandemic levels, we are noticing trends in littering and trash carelessness. We now have close to 350 streetscape trash cans throughout the BID that we change and maintain daily, yet a few folks are having trouble with placing their trash in these cans. In some cases, folks have just dropped and littered empty to-go food packages and containers on the street or sidewalks where a trash can was within ten feet. We take pride in keeping our streets and sidewalks clean and free of litter for everyone downtown, so please help us by making sure your personal trash makes it into one of our trash cans. If you see someone littering, please let us know immediately. Thanks for your help with this and enjoy spring before the convection-oven heat takes over soon.

Be well!

Erik Nystrom