CHOCVB Board Meeting Minutes 061720

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3 | P a g e C H O C V B B O D M e e t i n g J une 1 7 , 2 0 20 New Business/ Roundtable Mayor Pam Hemminger – The Downtown Partnership is trying to help with bringing people downtown with music and art: Getting people outside and we are trying to open up more areas for people to be outside downtown that are safe. Closing off parking lots, having biking trails, narrowing the lanes on West and East Franklin. Music and art resonate with trying to get people up and about. I think we need to think about playing to those strengths as well. People are looking for those outdoor activities they can do with their families. Hiking is fabulous and we have a lot around here. The town will narrow Franklin Street down to one lane of traffic each way and take the other lanes and make them the biking/walking trail and expand outside dining and retail to the sidewalks. Then, take some of the parking lots that we normally use and turn those into areas for people to be safely outside and have those music opportunities and have that art opportunity so we can get people to come back downtown. Just to be outside more and frequent our restaurants and our retail areas. The town is promoting the face coverings and a safe experience. The Downtown Partnership has launched a whole new campaign as well – Experience Downtown – and it has got the XDCH for Downtown Partnership. The partnership is trying to do more with loading zones. Trying to do more with takeout. Just getting people to come downtown in the first place. Lydia Lavelle and Betsy Bertram – Town of Carrboro updates (pdf report from Betsy). Mayor Lydia Lavelle: Mayor Hemminger and I have been talking almost every day about this whole crisis. We have been meeting with Commissioner Penny Rich and Mayor Jenn Weaver from Hillsborough to kind of go together as one Orange County on all of our decisions. Shortly after the crisis began, we reached out to our local businesses to see how we could support them. There is such a fine balance between reopening our economy and keeping people safe. I want to give a shout out to Carrboro United, which has been a local economic effort that has kept a lot of our restaurants and small businesses afloat during this time. We recognize that our minority-owned businesses are being affected even more disparately than our other businesses. We are making special efforts to make sure they have access to our second round of grants. Betsy Bertram: Carrboro did a full blown business survey to gain real time information from businesses of what support looks like. One of the most shocking pieces of information that came out of that and several conversations that I have had with the Carrboro Business Alliance is that, especially for food and beverage, the way that they make money is by filling the restaurant completely and having as many turns in the night as possible. Due to the customers being more comfortable with the takeout and pickup model, a lot of restaurants would rather focus on perfecting curbside than opening up their dining room, which is a liability at this point. Also, they are having trouble getting employees to come back, who are now making more on unemployment then they are coming into work. We are hearing from consumers that this model creates a multi-shop experience, which is something we still need for economic development. I have included a link on my report. Kayla Dempsey - North Carolina High School Athletic Association updates NCHSAA cancelled the basketball championships. We were really excited that we had sold a lot of digital tickets for UNC and obviously, that did not happen. It was a crazy week. At the same point time that we cancelled the basketball championship at Carolina, we also suspended spring sports at that point until the end of April, which then got pushed to May 15th per the Governor which then we ended up cancelling all of spring sports once the Governor made the decision that schools were cancelled for DocuSign Envelope ID: 8AD3FF29-5083-4B94-98F6-B99CC7D47930