Intown Or Outta Town

Here’s something that was brought to my attention the other day. 

Intown Concord attended the most recent city council meeting to thank the city for $20,000 they received to assist in the funding of their organization. Also on the agenda was a public hearing to discuss the hiring of the public relations firm Louis Karno & Associates, to provide updates and promotional activities during the 20 months of construction for the Complete Streets project. So where was Intown Concord while the council was taking public testimony. It seems they had left the building immediately after thanking the council for their funding.

As I understand it, Intown Concord is an organization whose goal (or mission) is to represent and promote our downtown. Over the years there have been a number of organizations who have professed to represent the downtown and Intown Concord is just the latest. But what is interesting, is that it appears each subsequent organization has received less support from those they claim to represent.

Main Street Concord, Inc., then Concord Inc., and now Intown Concord. Each organization has laid claim that they are representing the downtown, but it seems to me they are more concerned with pushing forward their own preconceived agendas. Not so much listening and supporting, but lots of telling folks on Main Street (many who have been there for decades) what is best for them.

Currently Intown Concord lists 56 members on their website. That’s significantly less then the 70 (plus or minus 2) merchants who signed a petition more then a year ago, expressing their concerns about the recently approved Complete Streets project. And I don’t recall Intown Concord voicing the concerns of those 70 merchants at city council meetings or at the Complete Streets Advisory Committee meetings.

So when the city asked for proposals to promote the downtown during construction, four organizations responded. Obviously one was Karno. One of the others was Intown Concord. Intown Concord is  staffed by a part time operations manager and a second very part time individual who will be coordinating this years market days activities. While Karno is a full time staffed public relations firm with local, national and international experience. So it should come as no surprise to anyone, that the city would choose an established public relations firm to do PR work for the city over the proposal from Intown Concord.

It seems strange to me, that Intown Concord which is supposed to be representing our downtown, didn’t take the time to testify about the importance of having a public relations and information campaign in place during the construction of the Complete Streets project. Was it sour grapes, because they didn’t win the contract? 

Regardless of what your feelings are about the Complete Streets project and the expenditure of city funds, it is hard to argue that during construction, our downtown merchants will have a rough go of it. So one would think that if there is something that could be done to mitigate the potential loss of business, it would be a good thing. Virtually everyone agrees (both those who support and those who oppose this project) that the hiring of a PR firm can go a long way in mitigating peoples apprehensions about frequenting the downtown during construction.

So where was Intown Concord? Is this just another example of yet another downtown organization that puts their interests ahead of their members? Why wouldn’t an organization who has many members from the retail community speak to the council about a component of this project that can offer much better odds that at the end of construction we will still have a retail community downtown?

If Intown Concord is truly an organization that is here to promote our downtown, maybe it’s about time they start to support our downtown merchants.  Or is Intown going to be just another organization that claimed to  be representing the downtown only to wind up heading out of town.