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Stay Local! Unveils First Neighborhood Guide & Map
March 20, 2007
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The guide series will serves as a graphic demonstration of the economic viability of local neighborhoods, even areas like Mid-City that were hard hit by flooding, and Stay Local! hopes they will encourage further investment by businesses and residents.
Stay Local! Unveils First Neighborhood Guide & Map
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — March 19, 2007
Contact Dana Eness at 504-617-6618 or dana@staylocal.org
New Orleans, La. - Stay Local!, a nonprofit initiative formed to strengthen the New Orleans economy by supporting locally-owned businesses, will unveil its first Neighborhood Guide & Map featuring locally-owned businesses in Mid-City. A celebration and media event will be held on Saturday, March 31, at Venezia Restaurant, 134 N. Carrollton Avenue, from 2 pm to 4 pm.
In addition to the Neighborhood Guide & Map, the celebration will include giveaways and coupons for special offers from local area businesses, and entertainment by local “mostly girl vintage jazz band” Some Like it Hot.
Stay Local! director Dana Eness says the aim of the Neighborhood Guide & Map project is to encourage residents and visitors alike to patronize locally-owned businesses, thereby keeping more of the money they spend on goods and services in the local community and contributing to the area’s economic recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
Stay Local! began building an online directory for locally-owned business last year at www.staylocal.org and the printed Neighborhood Guides & Maps will help put this information into even more hands.
“Tourists and residents alike still have a lot of questions about which local businesses have returned since Katrina and what new ones have cropped up,” says Eness. “These guides help answer those questions and at the same time show the great variety of goods and services offered at businesses owned by our neighbors across the metro New Orleans area.”
The guide series will serves as a graphic demonstration of the economic viability of local neighborhoods, even areas like Mid-City that were hard hit by flooding, and Stay Local! hopes they will encourage further investment by businesses and residents.
Stay Local! is producing its Neighborhood Guide & Map as a public service and will roll out future editions covering other neighborhoods soon. To be listed in print guides, businesses first must register online at www.staylocal.org/add. Basic listings are free to all eligible, locally-owned businesses in metro New Orleans.
“If you want to be represented in print guides, you need to be in our database and we would love every eligible business to be listed,” says Eness.
Geoff Coats, co-founder of the nonprofit Urban Conservancy that produces the Stay Local! project, emphasized that the directory is not limited to storefront shops. “Local musicians, artists, wholesalers, service providers, distributors - they’re all important parts of the local economy and they all can benefit from being part of our directory,” Coats says.
The University of Missouri-Kansas City provided financial and technical assistance through a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) “Universities Rebuilding America Partnerships” (URAP) grant. Mercy Corps provided additional funding.
“The Mid-City Neighborhood Organization is excited about the neighborhood guide,” says Jennifer Weishaupt, Vice President and Economic Development Coordinator for Mid-City Neighborhood Organization. “It’s a wonderful tool to educate people in Mid-City and all over the Greater New Orleans area about what’s going on in our neighborhood.”
Renaissance Publishing, publisher of New Orleans Magazine, St. Charles Avenue, Louisiana Life Magazine and New Orleans Homes & Lifestyles, will distribute 10,000 copies of the guide as inserts in their April issue of New Orleans Magazine.
“Our company is locally-owned, just like so many small businesses and we want to do everything we can to help our neighbors rebuild,” says Todd Matherne, company CEO. “This is just a small part of our continued commitment to New Orleans.”
Copies will also be available at participating Mid-City businesses and online in a printable format at www.staylocal.org.
For more information, contact Dana Eness at 504-617-6618 or dana@staylocal.org.
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Stay Local! is a project of The Urban Conservancy. Founded in 2001, The Urban Conservancy is a New Orleans-based nonprofit dedicated to research, education and advocacy that promote the wise stewardship of the urban built environment and local economies.
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