The Power of Placemaking and Creating Community-Driven Events
The Power of Placemaking and Creating Community-Driven Events
Alisha Espey, Downtown Davenport Partnership/Alternating Currents
10/24/2024
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In this week’s Local Marketing School episode, Emily Steele interviews Alisha Espey, the Program & Events Director at the Downtown Davenport Partnership. We dove into one of the area’s biggest festivals, Alternating Currents and all the details that go into drawing big crowds and executing on powerful partnerships across the city. Alisha discusses how she and her team create awareness and leverage local expertise as well as the power of placemaking and community-driven events. We discuss measuring success beyond traditional metrics and the value of creating a sense of shared ownership in community projects. We close out with a look at some fun upcoming experiences coming to the Quad Cities region!
TUNE IN FOR TOPICS LIKE:
2:43 Alisha’s journey from entertainment to wineries to the Downtown Davenport Partnership
10:07 The art of placemaking
12:46 Serving as the Festival Director for Alternating Currents, a music, film, comedy and art festival in Davenport
15:25 Attracting locals and visitors alike to attend events
16:50 Festival scaling strategies
19:41 Increasing foot traffic for area small businesses during events
23:38 Measuring success of events and activations
27:26 Building a cornerstone event in your city
31:01 What’s coming up next for Downtown Davenport
Listen to this week’s Local Marketing School conversation!
Other episodes you'll enjoy if you enjoyed Alisha’s episode:
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Emily Steele (00:01)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Local Marketing School. It's Emily here. We're back with a fun episode about placemaking and really how to drive local impact through events and programs and intentional use of spaces. And I have been so excited about this conversation because so much of why Hummingbirds was created was because of this blend of experience I had in my early 20s doing community development and neighborhood revitalization projects. And then also kind of being a marketer that was excited to get people on board to make the changes they wanted to see in their neighborhood and community and empowering small businesses to use marketing tools that are available at their fingertips to build foot traffic and build awareness. And so it's really cool to have conversation with people who are intentionally doing this in their own communities.
You know, so much of the success a city can have is based on the people that live there, that celebrate where they live, that show up to events, that talk about the things on social media to build awareness. That's like the whole ethos of why Hummingbirds has really started, because I believe fundamentally that real people using their voices can drive economic value. Talking to Alisha today was just like, this is like, I get it. I get what you do, and I love it.
I'll give you a little bit of a background about Alisha. She's an accomplished organizer known for her dedication to placemaking and community development. With a deep commitment to fostering vibrant, inclusive spaces, Alisha plays a pivotal role in curating and organizing events and initiatives that promote arts, culture, and local business growth. Passionate about accessibility and diversity, she strives to ensure that programming is available to audiences of all backgrounds.
She's known for wearing a lot of hats, which yes, you'll find out as you listen. Alisha serves as a program and events director for the Downtown Davenport Partnership, where she is instrumental in shaping programs that drive economic growth and enhance the quality of life in the Quad Cities. She also holds roles as an Alternating Currents festival director, box office manager for the Capitol Theater, and assistant girls tennis coach at Clinton High School. Passionate, empathetic, and detail-oriented, Alisha is committed to making a lasting impact on the place she serves.
You'll learn a lot about what she's doing in the Davenport area and maybe how you can consider similar if you're in a role like hers or if you're trying to make a difference in your own backyard.
Emily Steele (02:40)
Hey, Alisha, welcome to the podcast. So excited you're here.
Alisha Espey (02:44)
Thanks for having me, Emily. I am really excited to talk about the festival and all things Downtown Davenport.
Emily Steele (02:51)
Yeah, yeah. So, okay, give us a lay of the land. So anyone who's tuning in is like, what's Davenport? What's Davenport?
Alisha Espey (02:57)
Yeah, so Davenport is part of the Quad Cities. And so we are on the border of Iowa and Illinois, right on the Mississippi River. So it's a beautiful community, but it's comprised of quite a few municipalities. And so it gets a little quirky and complicated, but it's amazing.
Emily Steele (03:13)
I it. I love it. love it. Okay. So you are the program and events director at the Downtown Davenport Partnership. But tell us a little about your background. Like what ended up getting you to that role in life?
Alisha Espey (03:28)
Yeah. So we're so to make us more complicated, we're an affiliate of the Quad Cities Chamber and I have been at this organization for nine years, which is a long time in this industry. But prior to that, I really fell into this. So I'd always loved music and sports. And so I thought I had wanted to work in entertainment. Like I knew that from a pretty young age. Like I had booked bands to come to my high school when I was a freshman. Like I was just a really weird kid and I was always wanting to tell you about like my favorite band or my favorite thing. Like I've always been that amplifier of all my favorite things. So I knew I wanted to work in entertainment. I went to college at Loras in Dubuque and then moved to Chicago because if you want to work in entertainment, definitely the mindset is I have to move to a big city and I love Chicago. Like to this day, it's my like, it's a world class city and all the amenities. It's beautiful. But I learned a lot about myself there. I had a lot of good opportunities, but I learned like, I really needed a sense of purpose in my job. And I, and in my experiences that I was having, I wasn't really finding like, what's the greater purpose in this? There are amazing people in Chicago, but I really missed the sense of community that I found, you know, back home. so Chicago has pieces of that. It's definitely like a Midwest city, but I always felt like, it could be industry related to like the connections I was making was, more built on like transactional relationships. And so was like, where are the authentic connections and people that want to like genuinely, you know, just be good people to each other. So I still love the city, it was such a grind and so eye-opening to me of like, just, I wasn't making a lot of money, so that doesn't help either. You're sitting in the city where it's like all these amenities and everyone's like, it's so cool that you can do all these things. I was like, I cannot do any of these things. So I had this like really like soul crushing experience when I lived there and I had moved back. I tried it a few times.
So the last time I came home and I was just like, I gotta, figure my life out. I needed to build the bank account back up and just kind of needed any job. So I took a job at a winery, Wide River Winery, and we had opened a spot in Le Claire in my time there. And I just was doing wine tastings. That was the plan. I just wanted a temporary job. And if you're not familiar with LeClaire, which a lot of people are, because it's one of the most visited communities in the Midwest, it'syou know, home of the American Pickers and antique archaeology. So there's visitors from all over. So when I landed in LeClaire at the winery, I was like, I want to help them, you know, write the press release for their opening. And I want to do the commercials. And so I had asked leadership there if I could, and they, they let me and we, I booked a band. so for the commercial and it went so well that I came into work the next day and they were like, do you want to do this like the whole summer with the whole music series? And it was May and I was like, can I even pull that off? Can I even pull that off? Luckily I had made a really good connection with Ellis Kell, who is since past, but just huge person in the music industry in the Quad Cities. But he helped me book out this series for the summer and it just kind of launched the winery into like a new space, recognized as a music venue. in LeClaire, you know, we did wine walks and I got involved more in like the community marketing. And so now I wouldn't have known that it was placemaking at that time. But certainly now when I look back, I was like, I was absolutely in the space of placemaking when I was in LeClaire. And so from there, I got a job at the City of Davenport, a woman that I worked with, Kim Hatfield, came to me she's like, you need to take, you need to go after this job at the city of Davenport. I was like, she's like, you make so many great connections. I was like, I don't even know that I want to be here. Like I was still in the space that like, I want to move back to a city. but I luckily can push me into a role with the city in, in, that coordinated all the volunteers for RAGBRAI, which, you know, big bike ride in the summer has different stops and it landed in Davenport. So I'm coordinating all these volunteers and the Downtown Davenport Partnership worked with, that was the first time I met those folks, and they were planning the party. And I kept thinking, it's cool that I'm coordinating volunteers, but man, I really wanna plan the party, event planning just wasn't in my DNA. Maybe it is, but I didn't recognize it at the time, but I knew that I wanted to do it, and they did this really amazing festival called River Roots Live. It was on a riverfront big ax.
And so when I met them, it was like a light bulb. Like, my gosh, like this is like such a great blend of the two worlds of like community, purpose, place, art. And so when the job opened, I didn't care what they paid me. I was like, I just want in. And I guess it worked out because I'm still, still hanging around.
Emily Steele (08:48)
Yeah, you're still doing that. You did the RAGBRAI event successfully. What year was that?
Alisha Espey (09:00)
so that would have been 2012 or 2013. I'm trying to think of, cause they've been, RAGBRAI has been back since I've been with the partnership. So I ha, so I have planned the party. but yeah, so we've had a few stops with RAGBRAI. It's a, it's a huge, huge event.
Emily Steele (09:08)
Yeah, if anyone's listening for the first time, it's like, what are you Iowans talking about? It's a ride across Iowa. It's so funny. Like it's something that like how many hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands. I don't know what the number is, but millions. I don't know. It's. It's wild. It's a party across the state and people have a great time. I have yet to do it, but it's on my it's on my list. I feel like as an Iowan, I biked across America, so I'm like, I have to bike across the state like that's just like.
Alisha Espey (09:30)
You have? my gosh, yes. Yes, I can't believe that you've biked across America but you didn't start with RAGBRAI.
Emily Steele (09:49)
People are like, you must, yeah, right? People are like, for sure you've done RAGBRAI. I'm like, no, just, just the country. Like that's, that's my starting point. So maybe I can just like squeeze it down to like the state level, but I love it. So you drop the word placemaking for anyone who's like, what is she talking about here? Tell us a little bit about what placemaking is.
Alisha Espey (10:08)
Yeah, so placemaking happens all across the country. It's an industry. So no matter what city you're in, there are people working on quality of place in your region. And so sometimes that might fall in like the destination marketing organization, which I know Hummingbirds are generally familiar with. And then sometimes it falls within the chamber or it's its own entity. like I work for a business improvement district. That's kind of more common terminology.
And so in our area, in Davenport, we have a special district that these property owners decide that they want to be elected to tax themselves a little bit higher to pay for these services that just kind of help the collective good. So we might be working on streetscaping and flower baskets one day and planning events the other and doing business development. And it's just like all the things that make your community a great place.
Emily Steele (11:04)
It's not great. I was like, there are people out there thinking about this and getting paid to do that. And it sounds like a really fun job. Before we went live, was telling Alisha that was one of my first jobs out of college outside of doing a year of AmeriCorps service. was the first job that came available to me when I was searching as a young 22-year-old woman was like, a neighborhood engagement coordinator. And I just thought it sounded fun. I'm like, engaging in a neighborhood sounds creative, sounds interesting. And it was a lot of place making rooted into kind of neighborhood revitalization strategy. How do you think about neighborhoods and place and walkability and safety and like experiences within specific pockets of neighborhoods? And it was so meaningful. I said, if I was not an entrepreneur and like so obsessed with what we're doing, I would totally be doing that type of work because it really is so fulfilling. It's creativity meets strategy and it just feels good. So congrats. I would just love that job for you.
Alisha Espey (12:01)
I absolutely love that you have that experience because not everybody does. So when you're trying to explain to people, it takes a minute to describe kind of why or how we do things. But it's been great. We're connected to a bigger network, the International Downtown Association. And so we've been able to travel all across the country and meet people that do this job. And it is always just like the collective group of people that like think about these things from day to day are just so fascinating.
Emily Steele (12:33)
I love that. So fun. Okay. So something you love talking about and love engaging in is your Alternating Currents Festival. Tell us a little bit about that. How did that come to life? What is it? And how are you involved in it?
Alisha Espey (12:47)
Yeah, so I am the festival director for Alternating Currents and it is a music, film, comedy and art festival. It's hundreds of events over basically a four day period. It was founded in downtown Davenport in 2017. So, I mentioned being obsessed with River Roots Live, our big riverfront festival, which a lot of communities do that, but behind the scenes when you produce an event like that it's a lot of infrastructure. It's a lot of cost. You're very dependent on the weather and beer sales to make the event even cashflow. And so when you look, we're a nonprofit. And so when we had a couple of years where weather just was really challenging and it was detrimental to our budget. And so as much as we all loved that festival and loved working on it, we just needed to take a step back with our board and kind of reassess like what's our greater purpose of why we do these events. And so the idea of alternating currents was sparked and a little influenced by like South by Southwest. And there is a festival in Appleton, Wisconsin called Mile of Music. And so we just kind of took elements of that and took what were the strengths that we already had in the Quad Cities. And so we program all of the events inside basically existing businesses or public spaces.
And so our organization has no beer tent at all during the festival. We don't capture any food or beverage sales. All of that economic impact is going directly into the businesses. And so when you visit and come to the festival, you're getting just like this really genuine Quad Cities experience where you're not just discovering, you know, maybe your next favorite artists, but you're also discovering your next favorite place. And it's grown. It's just, started the first year with like a dozen venues and now we're like up to over 30 in Davenport and 44 overall because we've expanded into downtown Rock Island, Illinois and downtown Bettendorf here in Iowa. So it's just, it's wild to be like this early and on the festival and see it grow that much, but it's also just amazing.
Emily Steele (15:03)
Yeah, it's so validating. It's like, okay, if this continues to grow, it shows like this is what people want. This is what they look forward to. Like, okay, we should keep doing this instead of trying to force something that maybe isn't organically coming to life. Do you look at it as a play to drive tourism or local engagement or both?
Alisha Espey (15:23)
Well, it certainly has the potential to do both. would say right now we're our footprint. We're seeing people drive, you know, within the two hour radius of the city. but yeah, I, also haven't been very like our marketing budget has been small. So we haven't like dipped our toe into other cities. Hummingbirds has been one of the ways we've been able to do that. But certainly our perspective has been let's grow within first because we need to buy in from the local community before we really like try to sell it externally to other audiences. And so I do feel like we've reached the point where like the local community really gets it. There are still people that miss River Roots and I totally get that. But once you start to realize like the greater mission behind what we're doing, it hasn't been a hard sell and it's a low barrier festival. I don't know if I mentioned but almost every activation is free. So like there's no ticket required. You just show up downtown and you kind of explore as you as you wish.
Emily Steele (16:26)
It's super cool. Okay, so kickoff in 2017, which was a while ago, but not that long ago. Time is weird, right? So as you think about early years and then how the festival has really grown, are there some things you think you've done from like a marketing, social media, community building, place making perspective that you can attribute to the success of its growth?
Alisha Espey (16:33)
Yeah, so there's a couple things. One, when you think about the community and the venues, you can't grow to 44 venues if your community doesn't have the places to host these activations. So we look at this as like our annual opportunity to celebrate like cool and new things. So like this year we were able to move our film festival to the Last Picture House, which is this new boutique cinema that was opened by Hollywood producers Scott Beck & Bryan Woods, it's just, it's an incredible space. so getting to like showcase that and we put movies or we put live music on the rooftop. And so we had the film festival going on inside the studios and bands on the rooftop. And it just was just, it added so much. So when you see, when you see the festival grow in that way, that's just like a no brainer. You're like, yeah, this is, this is great. We can celebrate community growth. I've certainly seen, we, we've changed some strategy, you know, to how we market it. And it's really just like providing the best toolkit when you are activating that many artists and spaces, thinking through like, this is a really good opportunity to leverage those audiences. And so we do a pretty good job and spend a lot of time on developing social media kits that are very specific to the venues, very specific to the artist sponsors. And we just like give them that Dropbox link and say go wild because their network and their audience is just like untapped to us and a good thing to leverage.
Emily Steele (18:29)
Yeah, absolutely. And you're just like, Hi, here, here's how you do it versus you have to come up with all of the creative assets and how to talk about it. I find that so helpful, helpful when I go to conferences, I'm either speaking at or engaging with in some way that they kind of tee it up. Like I always at the end of the day, want to share like my own authentic voice and perspective on things. But to get me 50 % of the way there through like visuals or just like bullet lists, like I cannot tell you how game-changing that is for me personally, so I know I'm not the only one.
Alisha Espey (19:01)
Yeah, and we've seen it. How people talk about the festival in these last two years as opposed to previous years where maybe we didn't spend as much time on those assets. It really is a game changer.
Emily Steele (19:10)
Yeah. That's super cool. So, okay. I think too with festivals, what I've heard from even small businesses in Des Moines specifically around different festivals in certain areas of town is they're like, you'd think that like this would be impactful for these festivals to be on our block or in this district, but actually like I don't get more foot traffic because of it. Actually I don't get any. So you think about that. Is that something you see in your area and Davenport or like how do you how do you try to help them with that?
Alisha Espey (19:43)
Yeah, that's not unique to Des Moines. So that's, it's certainly an issue for small businesses with events. And it was an issue with River Roots Live because we created this place that people, they drove, they parked, they came into our festival grounds and then they left and went home. And so they really weren't experiencing like the core downtown of the businesses. We have other events that draw a lot of people where we might shut down streets, but those people are coming to the party and then they're leaving. They're not there with a shopping mentality. And so that is what inspired us to do alternating currents. And so obviously the official venues where we're programming them, they're going to do really well. There's also people that like just need a break. Maybe like it's, you got some sensory issues, you don't want to be in the mix of those big crowds. So they are plugging into other venues that are not official or maybe they have late night food and that's where they're grabbing, they're grabbing their food.
And then when it comes to retail, that's the, that's the trickiest one, right? Because if you're coming to a festival, maybe you're not thinking about shopping or that's just like not top of mind. so there's a couple of different approaches that we do. So we have a made market. we actually have a few pop-up markets. so we do have people that come downtown with a shopping mentality because they're coming to these markets with the venues being across downtown. Our hope is that you discover a place that you that you didn't know before, that you didn't see the last time that you were downtown. And then we utilize like our, we have a app, a mobile app for the festival. And so there's a section that has exclusive deals that businesses can kind of post something about their product. We utilize Hummingbirds to do like special tours. Like we did a hot glass tour last summer and a tour of one of our chocolate shops. And so finding ways to immerse that audience into these it like intentionally into these retail spaces. Maybe they're not purchasing that day. Maybe they are. But at a bare minimum, I want you to know that this place exists and you can come back downtown and shop.
Emily Steele (21:51)
Yeah, I love that intentionality. I think there's such a misunderstanding, like so many of these small businesses, people will be like, I bet you're so excited that like Pride Festival or Alternating Currents or whatever it is, like event is like in your neighborhood. And a lot of times businesses are like, no, we actually don't get like any business during it. So to be so intentional just shows like the quality of who you are and what DDP is like to say, yep, we know this is challenging and like we might not overcome it perfectly, but we're gonna do what we can. know, a lot of people are getting their festival outfits before the festival. So it's like, I can't tell you people are gonna shop because hopefully they already shopped with you before they, you know, got ready for this big thing.
Alisha Espey (22:33)
Right. Well, it's hard to measure too. When you talk about exposure, well, yeah, people walked by your store and maybe they found it. We ask in our survey to attendees afterwards, did you discover a business that you didn't know about before? How much money did you spend while you were in downtown? So we can try to get at least some data behind it. But luckily, I would say all of our retailers in downtown Davenport understand the greater mission that, maybe...We have another retail shop that booked a barbershop quartet during alternating currents and then had like a hip hop artist come in and do like a pop up show. So we've put things in surprising places, like in retail shops that maybe you wouldn't expect to see and act just to like get you in the door.
Emily Steele (23:23)
Yeah, so creative. I love it. I love how you're thinking about that. So, okay, when it comes to festivals and measuring the success, mean, you're sharing like a little bit of a survey. Like are these businesses getting more eyeballs? Like is it actually helping them? Are there other ways you measure the success of alternating currents and other activations?
Alisha Espey (23:42)
Yeah. So we certainly look at, like Placer data. So Placer AI, tracks your mobile devices. So you can kind of, because without tickets, it's really difficult for us to say like, we had a thousand people downtown or 20,000 people downtown. Like I don't have ticket sales to back that up, but I can use a mobile user data through Placer to kind of track, is the festival growing or not? And it's growing. and you can track some economic impact and We do survey our businesses and the other way we kind of measure success is through our partnership numbers because like I said, leveraging those other audiences and it's really important for us to keep the lineup pretty diverse and reflective of the entire community. So trying to think through like, maybe our role is more building that infrastructure, the sound, the stage, the lights, and plugging in other community organizations. So they can take advantage of the market, the built-in marketing and the built-in production that maybe they don't have the expertise to do. So we've been able to do that. Like we partnered with Humility Homes this year to do like a homeless open mic project. We partner with our Blue Society to program a stage. So yeah, we definitely think about success in partnership numbers as well.
Emily Steele (25:09)
make so much sense. And I think too, like something that I get really excited about with Hummingbirds and I feel like you probably can like agree with this as well as like we live in like the loneliness, there's a loneliness epidemic of people feeling really lonely and like, what can we do as organizations and like, what can DDP do? What can Hummingbirds do to get people out, exploring their city, making new friends, like connecting with an environment, with a place, with a like a really great meal or a really incredibly talented artist that inspires you to improve their quality of life. And, you know, I'm, sit here and I'm like, I can never truly measure. I mean, I can survey, right? Like, but you know, it's like the right thing to do. And so it's like, maybe Alternating Currents doesn't have this like black and white, this increased whatever by X percent. And that's okay. Cause it's like, this is good for the community and someone needs to do something like this. And so you can just Just own that, you know?
Alisha Espey (26:08)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's always important to look back to what your mission is and it's hard sometimes. Certainly when I'm out selling sponsorships and they want that hard data and I can give it to a degree, but there is just like this energy that happens during Alternating Currents that unless you are in it, it's hard to describe. But when you're there, you can feel those connections happening. And we do ask the question to attendees, like, do you feel a stronger sense of community after attending, I think is how we word it. And no one says no. Like 99 % of our responses say yes. yeah, so I just, and you know, on a greater level, when you think about like third places and connections, it's like the downtown environment is that place, So if you are feeling lonely, you just come on down and we'll take care of you.
Emily Steele (27:06)
The just got you. She's thinking about you. I love that. So if you are talking to other cities that are trying to do a little bit more place making or cultural events or like considering that, you know, they listen to this and are like alternating currents, like we want to replicate that. what would you say? Like, how would you, how would you respond to that?
Alisha Espey (27:07)
I got you, yeah. Yeah, well, alternating currents is super scalable. Like I said, we started with a dozen venues, but you could start with three. I mean, that's what we did in Bettendorf this year. You could start with one. Last year they did one. And you don't have to be an expert on like booking or you you don't have to decide what talent you should bring. You can plug into your local community to do that. So I mentioned that we leverage partnerships like for us. Raccoon Motel is in downtown Davenport and that's ran by Sean Moeller and Sean Moeller is known like across the country. He's been in the music industry a long time. He founded DayTrotter and he has a successful venue in downtown Davenport. And so I just go to Sean with a budget and say, you know, go nuts. Same with Common Chord, which is a nonprofit, you know, here in Davenport, they get to own a stage. We have a local comedian curate all the comedy. So we plug into those local experts and that's what kind of makes it, know, we say the special sauce or that's what makes it magic. Like it's plugging into those already, like people that are already doing it year round and, and having them curate the lineup. I mean, I certainly have a say and we book some spaces, but we leverage those other tools.
Emily Steele (28:49)
I mean, I think that is like the key message takeaway and just like underscore is like you are empowering others and collaborating. And I think so many people get it wrong. I'm like in the entrepreneurial space and I see a lot of decisions being made around this space by people who aren't entrepreneurs, but they're city leaders or they're in some level of like state government. And I'm like, you're making decisions for how? How can you possibly be doing that? And so I love hearing you say, no, we work with people who are really good at this. This is what they do. Hand them the keys and help them unlock the success, because they're part of it. They're instrumental. And I think that's where a lot of people get it wrong from my perspective, is just trying to take ownership of something instead of having a very collaborative spirit around it. Do you agree? Have you seen that?
Alisha Espey (29:45)
Yeah, maybe my favorite thing is like during, Well, we're not perfect. Well, first, I appreciate the compliment. We are not perfect. We still have like a lot of growth area, like ways we could grow. but what I love is during alternating currents, like I had somebody come up to me this last year and they were like, who, who owns this festival? And I was kind of taking it back. Cause on one hand, like the marketing person in me, like kind of died. Like, what do you mean? Like the downtown Davenport partnership owns this.
Alisha Espey (30:14)
But at the same time, I have no desire to own, I have no desire to be the face of it. I have no desire to be the owner of it. It really should be looked at as the community owns this. And this is a truly collaborative event that we do. And everyone should feel like they have a piece of ownership in it. Whether you're helping behind the scenes and planning, you're helping you know, our finance people are writing the checks or you're just like attending and showing up and spending $5 on a beer and watching a band for a set. Like everybody should feel like they own this thing.
Emily Steele (30:50)
We own it. Davenport, we do. It's your next movement. I can feel it. Awesome. Okay, to wrap our conversation, anything else going on with Downtown Davenport Partnership, that's coming up that people should know about.
Alisha Espey (30:58)
Yeah, so we well it's about to be the holiday season, so we have been busy. We have a couple. We have this another talk about collaboration. We do something called Deck the Downtowns and so we partner with Rock Island and Bettendorf again. And if you're sensing the theme, Rock Island and Bettendorf are within the Chamber umbrella, so we you know we're on the same teams. We work together weekly, so there are other cities in the Quad Cities that do amazing things. These are just the ones that I work with every day so.
But we do, in Davenport, do a pickle hunt. So for those that have like a German background, there's a tradition where, you know, a pickle is hidden in the tree. And I'm not German, but some have told me that in their families, have you ever heard of this? Okay. So in their families, when they find a pickle on Christmas morning, that person either gets an extra gift or gets to open the first gift. This is like, it's a German American thing, I guess I should specify. So I learned about this tradition and so we decided to hide pickles in downtown businesses. And so then you get this, yes, yes, I'm not lying. And so you get this stamp card and once you find 10 pickles in 10 different businesses, you can go redeem your card for your own pickle ornament. And we work with Western Illinois University where they 3D print our pickles every year. So it's like it it's a little special pickle ornament. So the pickle hunt when I came up with this idea, I just thought, this is gonna be like so fun for families. So we're gonna see all these families. People have turned it into bar crawls and we do see families. We see all generations. So yeah, I guess I've been surprised at the popularity of the pickle hunt. And then we also do a display challenge that's across the region. And so we hire local artists to do window paintings and holiday displays. And so you can go kind of vote for your favorites and that's super fun. during the holidays, we just, it's a great time to come downtown and just support small businesses. And we do a lot of gift card giveaways downtown. And so I like to surprise people that are just like on a Saturday shopping downtown. And I just give them a gift card and be like, thanks for coming down and spending your dollars here. Cause I know there's a million choices and you can It's so fun. People think I'm lying. I'm like, no, I just want to give you a gift card to say thanks. Yeah, why are you doing this? Yeah. But yeah, I just want to make sure that people feel the love downtown and the holiday season. So it keeps us busy. We're busy all year round. So just, hopefully people have a good holiday and come down and see us.
Emily Steele (33:37)
I know, like you've sold me. I'm like, this sounds fun. I have family in Davenport, so this is like a fun way to be like, hey, this is what's going on. If you don't know about it, we're going pickle hunting on like a Saturday or whatever day this holiday season. thanks for the idea. I'm going to. I've never heard of this. And like my husband's side of the family is predominantly German. So I'm like, we should do this as our family just for fun, you know, just to spice things up a little bit. But I think this is, it's so fun. I love all the things you're doing intentionally to support like place and economy and give people experiences that are really meaningful. It's been really illuminating to just hear your perspective and what you're up to. So thanks for taking time to share on the podcast today.
Alisha Espey (34:45)
I had so much fun. Thanks for having me.
