Greenwood blossoms with Board of Trade tending garden
By Mona Mattei
The last two Greenwood City Council meetings have been dominated by requests to support the Greenwood Board of Trade in their multitude of activities for 2010. From an organization that just two years ago was not very visible, the Board of Trade has risen to be a force changing the look and feel of the small city. The new energy at the board comes from a shift in membership, leadership, and new faces in town. Jim Nathorst, president of the board for 2010 and owner of the Pacific Grill restaurant, says the board is growing, partly as a result of all their work.
The board’s actions seem to fall into three categories: clean up and green up, creating new experiences for the community, and taking a leadership role in tourism / business development for the city. Nathorst says that they have developed a great working relationship with the city enabling them to access city parks and buildings for their events. The board is going to install bicycle racks to promote biking, work with the city on the designing a new website, and help manage and develop the campground.
“The working relationship that we’ve got with the city is really good. We’re really trying to develop that relationship to work collaboratively together. So it’s real positive and we’re happy about it,” says Nathorst.
Nathorst says the board held a park clean-up day to make O’Hairi Japanese park more beautiful, and their Green-up Greenwood initiative will continue for the year. Green-up saw local business owners place trees and flowers outside of their stores and restaurants last summer. This simple investment by the business owners made a beautiful impact along the highway attracting visitors to stop and explore the area. Nathorst says it’s really not an expensive project and each business does their own arrangement coordinated with the group.
“We’ve done two clean-ups in the park now, two work bees, and it really went well. We got O’Hairi Park all cleaned up really nice. The event planning is underway for the dinner theatre, demolition derby, and a three-day event still in the planning phase for July 1,” says Nathorst. “We’re getting really good response for the farmer’s market that we planned coordinated with Grand Forks and Rock Creek. We’ve had good collaboration with that. We expecting it to really take off and hopefully we’ll be able to expand to a winter market if can get a location.”
The board is hosting some new events and continuing to sponsor established events this year. The list includes: monthly family days in the park, dinner theatre June 5 and 6, demolition derby May 29, Canada day weekend (a three day event), and farmers market on Wednesdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. They also talked with the city about exploring ways to use the old curling rink for functions.
With only 18 members (and growing says Nathorst) this small board is becoming a place for local businesses to create opportunities for their community pride to shine.
“There seems to be a lot of pride happening and even in the residential areas people are cleaning up their yards,” says Nathorst. “It’s one of those things that if you get something really positive happening it usually spirals in the right way. So we’re trying to do that by encouragement not enforcement.”
