Downtown Salem Oregon

Pop Up, a new art gallery in the Salem Center Mall

Pop Up

The big news from Salem Creative Network is the opening of a community art gallery and event space at the Salem Center Mall. The soft opening is Wednesday, Oct 5 with the grand opening in November. Watch the video HERE . The license agreement with the mall is for October through December, with an option for extension upon evaluation. The focus of the gallery is mid-valley artists, crafters, musicians, fashion designers, performers, filmmakers, authors and poets. We are administering the store for a 20% commission of art sales. Interested artists can fill out the application HERE .

We need volunteers! Sign up HERE and help make downtown more livable. We have requested that city council support more pop-up stores and need to provide a successful model. That will only be possible with volunteers. Give back to your community and help it grow.

Pronto Pups

The Salem Creative Network supports the Salem Boys and Girls Club. We are planning a large event for January. Until then, you can support them at the Pronto Pup and beer fundraiser 1p-4p THIS SATURDAY, October 1 at Magoo’s. Original Oregon-made Pronto Pups will be available for consumption and the proceeds go to the Boys and Girls Club. See you there!

Zombie Billionaires Pub Crawl

Mark your calendars for the follow up to last year’s Dead Celebrities Halloween pub crawl. Zombie Billionaires will be roaming downtown on Friday October 21 for our bi-monthly Creative Pub Crawl. Meet at 6 p.m. at Pop Up, at the Salem Center Mall Food Court.

New EID administrator

Nothing is constant but change, The City of Salem selected Salem Downtown Partnership as the new administrator for the Economic Improvement District after Go Downtown Salem filed an incomplete application. Now the city will initiate the remonstrance process, where district property owners will vote on being taxed. While unlikely, if 33% vote no, the city must start the selection process again.

We’re looking forward to fresh eyes and ideas for downtown. Salem Downtown Partnership has done the work to organize property and business owners and deserves a shot at expanding on their vision. Now, they should make an effort to include all downtown businesses that have applied for membership to their organization to demonstrate their openness and transparency. Ignoring those that want to share a vision for downtown was the main criticism of the past administrator. Let’s hope that Salem Downtown Partnership allows all businesses a voice.

Doug’s World

Check out the new episodes on dougsworld.tv from August and September. Featured segments include Michael Taylor, Robes, Pickpocket Eloquence, Axolotl Daydream, Pop Up, Spiral Muse Art Gallery, and French winemaker Florian.

For decades, one thing downtown was always certain, a back-to-school sidewalk sale. This year, there is no organized event. After polling the downtown merchants this week, the Salem Creative Network found great interest in participation if other merchants were also involved. Permitting for three days, August 19-21, costs $37.50 per business. Click here to register for more information.

The Back-to-School Sidewalk Sale will be part of this month’s Third Saturday event, featuring a tasting tour, live television broadcast and outdoor music. Volunteer!

Meet the Brewer Pub Crawl
The Salem Creative Network celebrates the second anniversary of the Creative Pub Crawl on Saturday, July 16 with a “Meet the Brewer” Pub Crawl. Brewers from Gilgamesh Brewing, Calapooia Brewing, Fire Mountain Brewery and Seven Brides Brewing will be available during the four hour event that visits three downtown venues. Each brewer will bring two types of beer. Matt Dickason of Albany’s Calapooia Brewing, will offer Riparian IPA and Chili Beer, made with Anaheim, Serrano, Jalapeno and Habanero peppers. Henry Gorgas, from Carlton’s Fire Mountain Brewery is bring Bad Henry IPA and a summer seasonal. The event starts at 4:00 pm with Gilgamesh pouring at Copperjohn’s, continues at Magoo’s at 5:00 pm with Calapooia and Fire Mountain and the last stop is 6:00 pm with Seven Brides at Pete’s Place.
Participants will receive samples with purchase of $10 wristbands, available at the venues during the event.
During the past two years, the monthly event has drawn more than 2500 people downtown in an effort to revitalize the downtown economy, increase networking opportunities and provide a creative outlet for those interested in improving nightlife in Salem.

Themed crawls are every two months now. Upcoming dates, themes:

August 19 Downtown Luau
October 21 Zombie Crawl
December 16 Sno-Ball

Entertainment zone and the Economic Improvement District
The initial City Council work session occurs Monday, July 11, 5:30 pm at the Salem Public Library Anderson room. Unsure of the goals, topic but it should deal with the hospitality zone assessment proposed for downtown. Here’s a recent report about an assessment in Milwaukie, Wisconsin.. After the work session, the EID staff report will be discussed at the council meeting. This basically allows the city to ask property owners to select an administrator for the district. Whichever group gets the first option at the remonstrance process will likely get the job, although in this no-tax environment, a vote of no-confidence for all groups could happen.

Save even more money with solar thermal
Many homeowners already save money with solar-heated hot water systems. With current incentive, solar thermal has a quicker payback than solar pv and saves money on hot water, the main expense for most households. Find out more information at SOLAR THERMAL 101, 6:30 pm, Tuesday, July 12 at Salem Public Library Loucks Auditorium. Meet installers and see about our bulk-pricing program. Solarize Salem

Doug’s World LIVE
Our June 18 live broadcast of the Creative District on Commercial St is replaying on CCTV channel 22. Five merchants were featured; Art Department, Create-A-Memory, ABC Music, Greenbaum’s Quilted Forest and Where the Sidewalk Begins. The show also features live interviews with The Black Lights, Sons of Huns and Sexy Water Spiders in the studio as they tried some post-apocalyptic cooking. Here’s the schedule

Stay tuned for the next Doug’s World LIVE on Saturday, JULY 16 form 4 to 6 pm. We’ll be broadcasting the Meet the Brewer Pub Crawl from deep inside the hospitality zone.

Creative Pub Crawl

We are rapidly approaching the final Creative Pub Crawl of Year 2. Superheroes will be bounding through downtown Friday, June 17, as we bring the second year of downtown economic development programming to a close. Based on the wristband count and collected emails, we estimate that more than 2500 people have participated, spending $100,000 in 22 participating venues.

We want to especially thank our biggest supporters who were there since the beginning; Venti’s Cafe and Basement Bar, Copperjohn’s, Magoo’s Sports Bar, Pete’s Place, FlipSide and Straight From New York Pizza. Also, gratitude goes out to those that let us stop in sometime along the way; The Brick, Brown’s Towne Lounge,  Cokie’s Landing,  Hallie Ford Museum of Art and Grand Vines. New venues that we visited during that time included Jonathan’s Oyster Bar, Willamette Noodle, Old Spaghetti Warehouse, Downtown Market and Deli, Half Time and ƒ/stop Fitzgerald’s.

Sadly, The Space, Coffee House Cafe, Cafe Noir, 6 Ultralounge and Allessandro’s are no longer with us.

We are considering a format change to the Creative Pub Crawl starting in July. The venues are becoming too full on Friday nights, where they were emptier when we started in 2009. Bringing people downtown on Friday nights was the primary goal of the Crawl so MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Now what? We are receiving requests to move to Saturday afternoon and night, creating “special crawl” and visiting other parts of town. Please help us decide by completing our SURVEY at salemdowntown.net

Third Saturdays

With the failure of Go Downtown Salem and Salem Downtown Partnership to get along and apply for administrator of the Economic Improvement District (EID), efforts by property owners to represent downtown are on hiatus. City Council formed a subcommittee consisting of Mayor Peterson and Councilors Bennett, Tesler and Cannon to “take baby steps and wrap their arms around downtown stakeholders” to see if we can all just get along. The meeting schedule and actual agenda are yet to be announced but the intention is to have the problem solved by October 2011. First Wednesdays and Summer in the City, currently run by Go Downtown Salem have been cancelled. Salem Downtown Partnership, founded in 2005, has yet to produce any programming in six years. It appears that the only reason for the existence of both groups is to control the $300,000 budget that comes with EID administration, with economic development secondary to control.

This is the exact situation that caused business owners, property owners and artists to form Salem Creative Network and Salem Downtown programming in 2009. With no budget, we have grown economic development programming to include the Creative Pub Crawl, Willamette Valley Wine Walk and initiation of the Hospitality Zone Assessment process. Cultural Creative programming efforts include Cherry City Music Festival, Ignite Salem and Doug’s World. Greening Salem programming includes Solarize Salem and Megawatt Project.

Not surprisingly,  business owners are interested in economic development downtown. That’s why, starting on June 18, we are starting a new program tentatively (send us your creative name suggestions) named Third Saturdays where we will combines elements of our other successful programming to retail owners downtown.

Each Third Saturday will include a live television and internet broadcast of Doug’s World (4:00 to 6:00 p.m.) visiting a different downtown district (State Street Merchants, Court Street Merchants, Salem Center, Reed Opera House, Restaurant Row, Diamond, Creative, Fashion Districts, etc.) to showcase creativity in retail stores. This will be followed by an all ages concert at Ike Box, courtesy of The Space Presents. Email us if you have ideas or would like to volunteer.

Solarize Salem II

We are starting the second round of Solarize Salem on Wednesday, June 1, 12:00 p.m. at the State Capitol steps. We are looking for 50 Salem-area homeowners interested in buying or leasing a solar system for their rooftop. The 2010 program
attracted 400 interested homeowners with 52 joining the co-op and installing 165 kW of solar energy. After testifying in at the Joint Tax Committee last week, it’s apparent that drastic cuts – 97% (RETC goes from $34M in 2009-11 to $1M in 2011-13) are in store for the Residential Energy Tax Credits, which homeowners applied toward their solar systems. We favor transitioning the energy program to the feed-in-tariff pilot, similar to the successful Germany model. There is currently no framework for this transition.

The changes will take effect on July 1, 2011, so if you’re considering solar, please check out our program before then.

Thanks for your interest in social innovation and reply if you have any questions or concerns.

Ross