“2020 has been a challenging year,” said Julie Doran, executive director of the South Orange Village Center Alliance, in her 2021 budget presentation to the South Orange Village Board of Trustees on November 23. “When I was here a year ago … we had hoped we’d been focusing on fundraising and beautification efforts.” However, Doran noted that the unexpected and unprecedented arrival of the novel coronavirus and its resultant disease, COVID-19, had derailed many of those plans. “We had to focus on information gathering and communicating to our business and property owners.”
The Alliance is the nonprofit that manages the town’s special improvement district, which is tasked with promoting, programming, marketing and beautifying South Orange’s downtown area. The Alliance is funded by an assessment on commercial properties within the boundaries of the SID, plus a substantial annual allocation from the town’s municipal budget as it acts as an economic development arm of the municipality.
For 2021, Doran presented a budget that reflected reduced sponsorship and fundraising revenue due to COVID-19. However, the Alliance did not propose any increases in the township contribution or in the assessment to property owners.
Doran noted that, as COVID-19 ravaged lives and businesses starting this past spring, the Alliance — which includes its volunteer board members and two full-time staffers, Doran and Melissa Hodge — provided “almost daily email digests to our business members,” communicating state and CDC guidelines and other COVID-19 information.
Doran and Hodge also worked closely with Village administration to create an updated business directory on the COVID-19 portal on southorange.org. The directory detailed which businesses were open and operating, as well as their adjusted hours and services, due to the pandemic.
Doran and Hodge also worked to identify public and private funding resources while working with businesses to apply for grants, and worked on the Township’s reopening task force, creating professional advisers and mentors matches.
In addition, the Alliance extended its services beyond its borders to include all businesses in the township. While events such as PlayDay were cancelled, marketing aimed at social media was created to draw locals to support businesses.
Despite the efforts, 13 businesses have closed so far this year, said Doran. While some were approaching retirement, others were victims of the pandemic.
The good news: South Orange Village Center has recently welcomed three new businesses including Lumie Salon, Concepts Dance, and Juice Hub (coming soon). Doran says two more new businesses will be announced soon.
“After reopening, we wanted to make people feel comfortable and encourage people to support businesses in a safe way,” said Doran. Events such as sidewalk sales and the open-air market — which hosted 36 vendors on Small Business Saturday — have helped. Doran and Hodge say they also “worked with over 25 businesses to get their paperwork in for the outdoor dining.” Outdoor music was programmed to “introduce ambiance … in a responsible and safe way.”
In other good news, said Doran, demolition at the Blockbuster site has begun, making way for the Vose and Taylor mixed-use development.
In 2021, local businesses can look forward to e-commerce consulting (to launch in Q1 2021), more marketing and communications, and the return of the weekly farmers market.
Doran called the SOVCA budget “very conservative.”
“We are not asking for an increase in our assessment revenue … because of the current hardship on businesses we don’t think this is the year to increase our assessment revenue.” Doran explained that the assessment on properties is often passed through to businesses through leases.
Trustee Bob Zuckerman, who previously held Doran’s job, commended Doran, Hodge, SOVCA Chair Mark Murphy and the entire SOVCA board. “This was a tough year.” He congratulated the organization on securing a $75K Main Street New Jersey grant for COVID-19 relief: “Only 11 towns in the whole state got it.”
Regarding events in the new year, Doran said, “If we can bring back PlayDay and the Undercover Music Fest, we will. If not, we want to continue to find alternatives.”
