Downtown Akron Partnership Inc.

Filing Period

Jul 1, 2012 to Jun 30, 2013

Signed

Feb 14, 2014

Return Version

2012v2.1

Gross Receipts

$1,184,280

Mission

Major Activities

Activity 2

We provide safety and cleaning ambassadors to service downtown. The safety ambassadors patrol, provide public safety, battery jumps, car lock outs, safety escorts and give helpful information to workers and visitors. They also report potential and actual emergencies to police, fire and ems. We have quarterly blockwatch meetings for the downtown business owners. We distribute thousands of safety brochures every year. We provide the funding to put extra officers on the downtown streets on thursday, friday and saturday nights. The cleaning ambassadors provide supplemental cleaning services downtown. They remove litter and graffiti, pull weeds, pressure wash sidewalks and work on other special projects. They also distribute information to downtown businesses, workers and visitors. The first friday in may is our annual green & clean day. About 325 volunteers participate by cleaning, painting, picking up litter and pulling weeds in different sections of downtown. We maintain commerce park and it has become an additional green space for downtown employees to enjoy. We also have more than 80 downtown planters. The adopt-a-planter program had 36 participating businesses that planted flowers in our planters. We reimbursed them for the plants and put a sign in the planter that advertised their name. We also have 54 hanging baskets that we put on main street. We have attached 34 flower boxes to downtown fences. We provide the flowers and maintenance to all of these baskets and boxes. We also sponsor some of the downtown flower beds. We started a downtown community garden and one of the areas restaurants plants herbs and flowers in it. We added new waste cans and newspaper corrals for a more appealing streetscape. We also added additional cigarette receptacles on the street and paid for new signage for the towpath. The total expenses for this program were $502,669.

Activity 3

We promote and market downtown akron. We have our own events and partner with different entities to bring visitors downtown. Some of our partnerships involve the vendor cottages, the holiday tree lighting ceremony, downtown concerts at lock 3 and lock 4, the akron marathon and promotion of the lunch trolley. We decorate downtown windows during the holidays with our vintage decorations. We added quarterly downtown artworks celebrations to the artwalk, supplementing activity with visual and performing artists hired by dap. This year we had an event called akron art prize. Over 120 artists submitted their works which were placed in various downtown galleries. The public voted on the winners by texting their votes on their phones and there was an alternative way to vote for those without cell phones. Around 2,100 people cast votes. The winner and five runner ups received cash prizes. We use our website, mobile platform, the social media, various newsletters, sandwich boards and post flyers in kiosks to keep workers and visitors informed about what is happening downtown. We printed and distributed 52,000 rack cards to let people know about upcoming events. We did an eight page magazine spread and started filming a video to promote downtown. We hand out small gift bags of candy and promotional items during holidays. We sold passports that offered 16 different events, including first night, at a cost of $15.00. The actual value of the passport was $213.00. Schools and non profits were offered the opportunity of selling them as fundraisers. We promote and encourage restaurants to participate in restaurant week. If you dined at three or more of the participating restaurants, you were eligible to win a restaurant gift card, which we provided. We distributed coasters to downtown restaurants to promote our website. The total expenses for this program were $186,181.

Filer

EIN

34-1823835