Published: January 12, 2008 09:28 pm         

What's Up, Downtown?

Now that the new year has begun, we would like to thank the many people who have helped the downtown area thrive and become more of a community resource during the past year. Among these people are:

Our Mayor, Councilors and city employees – 2007 marked the most significant efforts to assure the future of the heart of the community in a number of years. Community interest has been strengthened by the major investment of time and resources that the city has made in the core business district. BID activity begins this month, and vintage street lamps and traffic signals are a reality.

New and expanded businesses downtown – Debbie and Craig Clemons have expanded their Hallmark presence downtown with a really great Gold Crown Hallmark store. In addition, they have established the new Wiggles and Giggles children's shop, which goes a long way toward making the total downtown offering in kids merchandise one of the best in the state.

Also, downtown has an expanded and much more active presence on the south side of Ninth now with the establishment of a number of new retail stores. Each of these efforts is a very significant investment to the store owners who are making the commitment to your downtown area. Now that Christmas is past, this is a great time to come in and get better acquainted with your downtown neighbors and really see the new downtown.

The CVB and Children's Museum organizations are working on making substantial investment of time and resources in the downtown area also. Ideas will shortly be turned into reality, and you will see very important changes to the old Katz location.

Customers are choosing to shop downtown, and new shoppers are discovering the merchandise choices which can only be offered by local business owners who buy just for our Oklahoma market. Even as strong new retail competition by large chain operations is felt in this area, our local merchants remain alive and well in the downtown retail mix. Shopping with local stores really is different, and we welcome you to come see us as we re-merchandise the downtown for the spring period. As always, we'll ...

... see you downtown!

     

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