Downtown Odessa

DOWNTOWN ODESSA, INC Minutes for November 9, 2021 Council Chambers Board Members present: John Herriage, William Vaughan, Alma Gomez and Shawn Rodriguez Absent: Denise Swanner, Mark Matta, Lonnie Lawrence, Sondra Eoff and Cruz Castillo Others present: Randi Pineda, Alexa Moulakis and Audrie Lujan Invocation: Alexa Moulakis gave the invocation. Board Chairman William Vaughan lead the meeting. The meeting started a 12:00 p.m. Downtown Odessa, Inc: 1. Approval of minutes – October 12, 2021 – Motion was made by Board Member Vaughan and seconded by Board Member Herriage to approve. The motion was approved by the following vote: Aye: Herriage, Vaughan, Gomez and Rodriguez Nay: None 2. Review of October 2021 Financials – Board Member Herriage went over the financials. Motion was made by Board Member Rodriguez and seconded by Board Member Vaughan to approve. The motion was approved by the following vote: Aye: Herriage, Vaughan, Gomez and Rodriguez Nay: None 3. New Business: a. Letters to Santa Mailbox – Per Alexa she has been wanting to do this for the holiday season. Its basically a decorative unofficial mailbox. It looks like a real mailbox, but it is not serviced by USPS, it is serviced by the organization that puts it out. It’s for children to mail their letter to Santa by coming downtown and putting their letter in the mailbox. She said they will have a form letter that they can use to do a mail merge to mail a letter back from Santa’s Downtown Odessa office. It cost about $1200. Alexa will get quotes for different mailboxes. Motion was made by Board Member Herriage and Board Member Gomez and seconded by Board Member Rodriguez to give Alexa a budget of $1500 to purchase a mailbox. b. Small Business Saturday promotion – Per Alexa, DOI has always done a business Saturday promotion. They are looking at doing it a little bit larger this year especially because of the year we have had with Covid. In the past they have done a social media giveaway. They did a twelve day small business giveaway. For twelve days leading up to Small Business Saturday they featured a small downtown business who would sponsor a prize their day and we would give them the option of what ever they want  their prize to be. It could be from a t-shirt, a $10 gift card to $500 earrings. The lowest value up to the highest and the highest value being the last of the giveaways like the grand prize. She is also looking at not only doing social media but doing radio behind it, digital advertising, geo fencing to target more people. Per Alexa funds can come out of savings from Halloween, not all the money was spent and since it is still a fall activity it can be funded out of that line item. Alexa asked the board if we wanted to expand to try and get more reach or just stay with social media. Board member Herriage asked how much we were wanting to spend. Per Alexa $5000 to $6000. The board was all in favor to spend the $5000. 4. Event Update: a. RECAP: Falloween Scavenger Hunt and Trunk-o-Treat i. Hunt: Oct 22-30 – We had 60 to 70 active user family accounts. Participation was down a little. People may have lost interest since we have been doing it for every holiday since Covid. We should continue but maybe pick one or two holidays. Overall participation was good. ii. Trunk-o-Treat: Oct 30th from 4-8pm and movie at 8pm we had around 2000 people show up for the Trunk-0-Treat. It went well a full day of programming with The Hispanic Heritage of Odessa. There was a great turn out for the Hispanic events and parade. b. Winter Events i. Parade of Lights – Dec. 4th 1. Registration Open – Oct 1st – Per Alexa registration going really well. We upped the prices and we have not had any complaints. This will help break even on prizes. We also have a sponsor that has come in for the parade of lights, Prosperity Bank. They traditionally sponsor the parade and are doing it again this year. This will help us bring in more money than what we are taking out for prize money and trophies. Over all we are up to 30 applications many have multiple vehicles. We have also agreed to a sponsorship with CBS 7. They are going to broadcast the parade live on one of their properties and record and play on CBS7 after the parade leading up to Christmas. Total package with production and free commercials and mentions during news broadcast valued at over $50k, good amount of publicity for 7 to 10 days leading up to the parade and a live broadcast with their TV personalities. ii. Winterfest Market – Dec. 4th and 18th –Alexa has handed over this project to Audrey she is their new Admin. Assistant. She said if you been on social media today the advertisement has been done very well even without advertisement, they have already had 2 people signed up for it within 10 minutes they put it on the website. Registration have been coming in today, a lot of movement on social media with people sharing commenting and tagging people. They are looking forward to having a really good healthy market for both dates.  iii. Teddy Bear Tea – Dec. 18th – Alexa has gotten everything confirmed with the Marriott, they are good to go. They are having 2 sitting to be a little more Covid conscious They are selling the tables as a whole. It will be single families sitting together instead of a mixture of families. Santa and Mrs. Clause will be there to read a story to the children, pictures with Santa afterwards. West Texas Nation Bank has stepped up to sponsor the teddy bears and they are in the process of being ordered. iv. New Years’ Eve – Dec. 31st - Everything is set up with the Marriott. They are going thru comedian options with the Play Committee to choose a comedian. It will be the show, heavy ord’vers, music, Dj, dancing before the midnight count down with complimentary champagne. a. Future Outside/Partner Events i. Memorial Car Show – West Texas Ford Truck Mafia 2nd weekend in June 2022. This is a local car company that lost one of there founding members to COVID this past year. They will be receiving a proclamation from the Mayor proclaiming a weekend in June as a memorial weekend for this gentleman. They will be doing a cook off on Friday night and a car show on Saturday 1 ½ day event. One thing Board Member Harriage wanted to bring up was that for next years future events TDA Texas Downtown Association. He wants Alexa to find out the date for next year so that more board members can go get involved and see what other cities are doing. Him and Alexa went to Denton this year and they had a lot of awesome ideals. It was exciting to know what other cities are doing what has worked and what has not worked. Per Alexa this will be in San Marcos next year, in November . 5. Director’s Report: a. Grants Update: Per Alexa not much movement on any of these, kinda all in the same category. La Catrina will be the next one to move up to the compiling documents for reimbursement. They had to go back to ODC to get permission regarding insurance requirements, so they granted her an extension. This is looking on being completed. b. i. Compiling documents for reimbursement – Ambler Law (façade and infrastructure) no movement ii. Under construction – PediCardio of West Texas (façade and infrastructure) iii. Under construction– ICON Tavern (façade and infrastructure) iv. Under construction– The House (infrastructure) v. Under construction– La Catrina & Co. (infrastructure) – 301 W. 2nd, Will open soon. This is an upscale Western Boutique. vi. Resubmitted documents under review – Gifts R Us (façade) vii. Awaiting paperwork – Paradigm Physical Therapy (façade) viii. Awaiting paperwork – Par II companies (façade) ix. Awaiting paperwork – Clover House (façade and infrastructure) x. Awaiting paperwork – Forever Young Spa (façade and infrastructure)  xi. Potential future applicants 1. Dr. Pill 2. Dr. Kurra 6. Downtown Odessa Inc. Staffing Update: a. Executive Director – Per Randi Pineda at the last meeting we told you we had an applicant that was in the final stages of being employed, during that process she failed to complete the pre-employment qualifications, so Michael Marrero rescinded the offer and moved on to looking for a new Director. He said he has a couple that have come in last week and he’s optimistic about and he’s hoping to interview next week. b. Executive Assistant – Lets welcome Audrie Lujan who is the new Executive Assistant