Published in the January 4-17, 2017 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Kathy Sullivan
Kathy Sullivan
The Morgan Hill Downtown Association chose our Dec. 8 board retreat for members of our nonprofit organization to reflect on our blessings, successes and small hiccups from last year — and to plan exciting new things for the South Valley community in 2017.
Led by Rosy’s at the Beach restaurant owner Rosy Bergin, we started our retreat with a review of all the association’s events held in 2016. We did this to evaluate their effectiveness and popularity in helping us with our core goal.
Our Off the Menu, Ladies Night Out and Indie Market received low marks on our scoring rubric, even though the events all have their fans. We decided to put them to the side and will consider if they can be incorporated into our other events.
Wine Week is one of our top events for downtown Morgan Hill in both popularity and number of people it brings to our local restaurants and shops. This year it will be held April 23 to 29, with the immensely popular Wine Stroll scheduled for Saturday April 29.
The Downtown Beer Crawl, our other favorite, is moving back to fall and will take place Oct. 14. Be sure to circle these dates in your calendars and add to the alert reminders on your information devices so you won’t miss out on the fun.
We are in negotiations with the city and the owners of the Movable Feast food trucks to bring back this well attended event to Wednesday nights.
MHDA President John McKay shared with us his plans to make Wednesday nights into this city’s Downtown Dinner Night.
We will be working with our local businesses to promote and come up with incentives to draw more of residents to our eateries on this night of the week.
One of our most exciting new events for 2017 is being tentatively titled “Restaurant Week.” Bergin and other MHDA volunteers will be working with our local restaurants to bring this to Morgan Hill. We have a hunch that it is something that will be highly welcomed by all the foodies.
Nancy Reynolds was instrumental in bringing the Indie Market to downtown the last two years.
In 2017, she is very excited about bringing more cheer and celebration to our area. While we already have a fantastic Holiday of Lights Parade, thanks to the Morgan Hill Kiwanis service club, the MHDA wants to continue bringing more opportunities for downtown during this busy time of year.
We have a tentatively scheduled date of Dec. 16 for a one-day holiday festival we are presently calling Holly Day. Reynolds has many ideas to delight people of all ages and help make Morgan Hill a family-friendly destination during the wintertime festivities. I can’t wait to see this play out.
MHDA is forever optimistically looking for better and new ways to make our core mission happen: to help organize and support events, initiatives and activities which showcase downtown. We invite you to join us in 2017 in having fun as we go along.
Kathy Sullivan is a board member of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association. She wrote this column for Morgan Hill Life.
