Building for Resilience

In the thirty years since the Partnership’s founding, Downtown Frederick has weathered many storms. The Partnership has always been a place where the community can turn in these times of crisis and these past few months have been no different.

Since March, the Partnership has been working diligently to respond to the most difficult challenge downtown has faced since the devastating flood of 1976. Even prior to the Governor’s state of emergency declaration, Partnership staff were providing daily support, communication and guidance to our downtown businesses community. We shifted events such as First Saturday and Alive @ Five online temporarily and encouraged the greater community to continue their vital support for downtown by promoting carry out and curbside pickup for our restaurants and retail establishments. As the impact continued, we’ve continued to launch and support our business community, which has included:

  • Communicating with the downtown business community each day since mid-March on new programs and webinars, updates to regulations and other resources to help the businesses survive the impacts of the pandemic
  • Launching the Small Business Resiliency Series in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Creating a Lending Library with items like cameras, hand tools, business books, audio equipment and more, for our businesses to borrow at no cost to create and shoot or record content, create window displays, etc
  • Creating pandemic signage for downtown businesses to display at their door to help customers feel safe when shopping or dining in each establishment. The signs encourage visitors to wear masks, stay physically distant and list the occupancy number for the space
  • Working with the City of Frederick on pop up dining options for restaurants, distilleries, breweries and other food establishments
  • Kicking off volunteer recruitment efforts for committees with a special focus on diversity and inclusion
  • Collecting and updated the Partnership website business directory with diversity information about our business owners
  • Launching the Vacant Window Project – bringing life and energy to windows of businesses under transition

We know that our work is ever-evolving as we continue to navigate the pandemic, and the Partnership is committed to supporting our downtown business community.

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