NCLM Southern City Volume 71, Issue 2, 2021

SOUTHERN CITY QUARTER 2 2021 34 A Pandemic Innovation: The Online, Main Street Marketplace in New Bern WHAT STARTED AS A CREATIVE COVID SOLUTION NOW PROMISES TO SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESSES FAR INTO THE FUTURE. JACK CASSIDY NCLM Communications Associate Faced with a potential crisis for their local economy, the City of New Bern and their Main Street organization launched a multi- approached strategic plan designed to provide local financial support. From that work came an innovation that will far outlive social distancing: an e-commerce site for small businesses, Shop Down- town New Bern, that serves as an online shopping hub for any local business that wants to participate. “It was a tool to help businesses survive,” said Lynne Harakal, exec- utive director of Swiss Bear, New Bern’s Main Street accredited organization. To understand the impact of this project, it’s important to recog- nize that many of the storefronts lining downtowns and city cen- ters across North Carolina are only that—storefronts. The business model doesn’t always expand elsewhere, not even online. For a number of downtowns, pre-pandemic, it didn’t need to. The shops and small businesses both drive and benefit from foot traffic, and that defines the mutually prosperous relationship between the town and the store. COVID-19 altered that equation. With downtowns largely empty and in-person shopping mostly unavailable, business threatened to dry up, leaving a once-blossoming Main Street in disrepair. Harakal saw this problem developing in plain sight. The pandemic didn’t mean these shops and businesses weren’t still providing items and services in demand—it just meant that they were harder, if not impossible, to reach. The gain of the box store was the loss of the corner shop. “You have Walmart in particular,” Harakal said. “They were able to remain open, and people were going in droves to do grocery shopping and pick up kids supplies—things that they needed. When we looked up what our downtown businesses offered, we have many of the same thing that Walmart had. It's just that it wasn't a one-stop single destination.” Swiss Bear took the lead on the e-commerce project, though the relationship between the municipality and the economic develop- ment organization is thoroughly intertwined. A close partner of the city and one of the oldest Main Street accredited organizations in North Carolina, the two entities were no stranger to working together. Operating in sync throughout 2020, this arrangement resulted in a loan fund for local businesses, planning for on-street dining and outdoor activities in town, and a re-imagined MumFest— an annual festival that stands as New Bern’s biggest economic boon each year. Normally held in the fall, city leaders transitioned the event last year to cover all of October and to feature extended dining hours in the downtown streets. For one year only, MumFest was better known as “MumFeast.” “MumFest usually brings in about 100,000 people over the week- end,” said Harakal. “But the majority of our businesses—about three quarters of them—had a better October in 2020 than they did in 2019.” With that local government support entrenched, Swiss Bear began the e-commerce project by applying for a grant from the Grills Fund, which was rewarding Main Street organizations nationwide that were seeking COVID-19 innovative solutions. New Bern was one of eight grant winners. The project then operated under the working title, the Bear Towne Marketplace, as a direct response to the problem Harakal and New Bern identified in the tension between downtown and Walmart: ease of access. “The Bear Towne Marketplace will provide a digital one-stop shopping platform that will help Downtown New Bern retailers reach customers during recovery and well into the future,” read Main Street’s announcement of