ELYRIA — Downtown Elyria is working to boost its economy after seeing a decline in foot traffic downtown.
Michael Griffin is the board chair for the Elyria Community Partnership; the organization focuses on bringing revenue and exposure to downtown.
Saturday, they hosted the first small business Saturday, encouraging people to rediscover downtown Elyria. Each participating store had passports and reusable shopping bags filled with spring-themed goodies. Passports contained a full list of available stops. Each passport had a tear-off page to enter a raffle for a chance to win prizes from local shops and restaurants.
“It encourages people to explore and make sure they realize what is downtown and what's available,” said Griffin.
Many mom-and-pop shops in downtown Elyria were eager to be a part of the event, hoping it would bring more awareness to the local shops.
“A lot of people that live on the next block don’t know were here,” said Carole Doerr.
Doerr is the owner of Pearls Girls Knitch and Stitch, located in downtown Elyria; the store is filled with yarns and fibers. Doerr's business also offers classes, and in order to make ends meet, the business participates in over 20 shows and festivals a year.
Doerr said like many stores in the area, they took a hard hit during COVID-19.
“We were impacted with little to no business because everybody went online, and some of them never just got away from going online,” said Doerr.
While some stores in downtown Elyria did not have an online option during the pandemic, others adapted to stay in business. Like Crystal Era, a metaphysical store that’s been in downtown for 30 years.
Victoria Kempton is a spokesperson for Crystal Era; she said it is the largest and oldest metaphysical store in Ohio. During the pandemic they reached out to clients and would drive to their homes. Four years later, they are still offering similar services.
“It’s taken a while for people to come out and feel safe again, but we are doing our very best to bring people out of their homes and back into the small mom and pop shops,” said Kempton.
People were excited to visit the different stores; Donna Henry drove from Grafton to see what local shops had to offer.
“It’s very important to keep those people in business instead of going to mass-produce places,“ said Henry.
Griffin said they will continue to host events weekly to attract people back to downtown Elyria.
“We really want to get businesses here and drive revenue into the local economy, into small shops like these and build taxes for the city. The more people shopping downtown, working downtown, hopefully living downtown, the more revenue there is coming into the city which will improve the city for everybody,“ said Griffin.
In the summer, the city will have food vendors and music downtown every Thursday.
“It really is trying to get people downtown, and now we're expanding those events like this throughout the year to continue that traffic through downtown and bring awareness to our local stores. People aren’t coming to these businesses as much as we would like, and it's just trying to get people's awareness of what is downtown,” said Griffin.
