As New Jersey residents everywhere adjust to losing an hour of daylight, one small town in the Garden State is determined to keep shining brightly.
Last month, the Delaware River Towns Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau launched the Help us Make our Small City Shine GoFundMe initiative, for which the chamber is seeking to raise approximately $7,500 to enhance the beauty and popularity of Lambertville.
As of Monday, roughly $2,800 has been raised by the chamber.
Funds will be poured into the beautification and marketing of the city, and accordingly be used by committees formed by the chamber to fulfill a number of actions.
These include adorning the city with holiday decorations in the winter as well as street flags and a banner on Bridge Street in the springtime; populating Lambertville with local musicians; and increasing tourism through a campaign featuring the creation and circulation of a series of videos spotlighting local business owners, amongst other efforts.
Lisa Voorhees, a board member of the chamber and chair of its Beautification Committee, explained that Delaware River Towns hopes to increase foot traffic to Lambertville through this myriad of actions.
“It’s just the idea to do what we could to make Lambertville just look a little bit more attractive and a little bit more welcoming,” Voorhees said. “We have a very beautiful, very historical town. It’s very diverse, with arts and music. And we wanted to be able to showcase a little bit more of that.”
Lambertville is home to a number of art galleries. Photography by Stephen Harris
Stephen Harris and Jane Wesby, board member and president of the chamber, respectively, emphasized that these efforts are being taken in direct response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and the chamber’s mission to keep Lambertville thriving in spite of it.
“When the pandemic started, we came up with a number of committees to address certain issues and concerns in the town. The marketing, the music, the beautification," Harris said. “It’s really a unified team effort to, quite frankly, make our city shine.”
“The restaurants were shuttered, the galleries were shuttered, the shops were shuttered. When we opened, people were slow to respond to get their umbrellas out or their tables out on the street, and we wanted to do something to show them we are alive and active and ready for business,” Wesby said.
Artwork in shop windows in Lambertville.Photography by Stephen Harris
According to Cindy Kunnas, executive director of the chamber, while some Lambertville businesses have opened over the past several months, more have closed or consolidated as a result of the pandemic.
“Around the time of the shutdown or just after, we did lose a few. I think it’s more of the ones that were just kind of hanging in there — the pandemic finally closed them," Kunnas said. “But absolutely there are concerns, because (businesses) are afraid of people shopping online and not wanting to come out once it gets cold out, or if the pandemic gets worse. They have their fears.”
The initiative represents an extension of two initiatives previously orchestrated by the chamber to respond to these fears: “Love our Shops,” launched in April to promote local businesses across the Delaware River towns, and “Love our Lambertville," launched in August to encourage volunteerism throughout the area.
Love Our Shops banner in Lambertville.Photography by Stephen Harris
The former initiative sought to ameliorate the financial losses endured by small businesses when the epidemic began.
“When the pandemic hit, we were very concerned about our town’s businesses, like everybody else,” Stephen Harris, board member of the chamber, said. “So we started with an initiative called Love our Shops, and to do that we created a giant banner that hung over Bridge Street, and we created a website that listed all of the essential businesses and the restaurants that were going to be open doing take out and eventually outdoor dining and some percentage of indoor dining.”
The latter initiative, Love our Lambertville, was created to recuperate funds the pandemic had cost both the city and the chamber.
“We thrive on tourism and revenue from parking meters and all sorts of things that are not happening,” Wesby said. "The chamber likewise did not hold its biggest fundraiser, the Shad Fest. And we have not been pushing our members for dues because they’re all hurting, so we created Love our Lambertville to invite people to volunteer to help beautify the city.”
Downtown Lambertville.Photography by Stephen Harris
Volunteers of Love our Lambertville, currently numbering 18 in total, have pursued actions including the cleaning up of the city, promoting Lambertville through marketing efforts, and distributing masks to local merchants.
“LoveOurLambertville.com became a hub for volunteerism, so the residents and anybody else who was interested can find out what initiatives we were working on and could throw their name in the hat for various different committees,” Harris said. “So it was a cooperative effort all across the city, the chamber and the residents as well.”
According to the chamber, initiatives to bolster the city have become more vital than ever in the face of a resurgence in the number of coronavirus cases across the state — and the increasingly frigid weather accompanying it.
“We are really worried about the winter and the holidays," Wesby said. "Our merchants are saying things to us like, ‘We usually have figured out which merchandise to order for our holiday sales, and this year we don’t know what to do.’”
Nonetheless, the chamber feels confident in its ability to create light throughout a time of a darkness.
“We’re a tourist destination, so we depend on visitors to come to our businesses. Not just the residents, but the visitors as well ... and we’re now stepping into the holiday period, so we’ll have a full string of holiday decorations up,” Harris said.
“We want to brighten up the shiny city, and really let people know we’re here, we’re vibrant, and we’re safe."
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Caroline Fassett may be reached at cfassett@njadvancemedia.com
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