Jessica Cejnar / Friday, March 19, 2021 @ 4:31 p.m. / Business, COVID-19, Community
Crescent City Contracts With Brand Strategist to Leverage Resources For Local Businesses, Nonprofits
People stroll along Crescent City's B Street Pier. On Monday, the city contracted with a brand strategist to further economic development locally. LoCO File photo: Andrew Goff
Previously:
• Crescent City Introduces and Is Already Chipping Away At An Economic Development Plan
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Nearly a year after Crescent City and the Del Norte Office of Emergency Services created the Economic Resiliency Task Force to help businesses weather the COVID-19 pandemic, the city is thinking long-term resiliency.
Councilors on Monday unanimously approved a $104,992 contract with Berry Strategy LLC. Using $100,000 in grant dollars from the California Endowment and a $5,000 donation from the Humboldt Area Foundation, the goal is to take advantage of state and federal resources that facilitate economic recovery for local businesses, nonprofits and residents.
“The grant calls for this work to build capacity and the capacity to take on other available funding and put it to the highest possible work for the community,” said Rick Bolton, a Berry Strategy consultant, who specializes in business and brand strategy. “The first step is the attraction part, developing a brand identity, using language deliberately and then as an extension, a communications strategy that’s clear and compelling to draw those dollars out and create something that’s so appealing… I’m talking about making sure the core purpose and core meaning and core assets of the community are really showing through.”
Bolton said that strategy could revolve around the recreational opportunities in Del Norte County or its natural resources.
“By putting a sharp point on whatever the scenario — whatever the platform we land on — we not only attract new money, but we also are most of the way to prescribing where the dollars should go in order to be on strategy,” he said.
Created early in the pandemic, the Economic Resiliency Task Force initially gauged the level of injury businesses went through as a result of shut downs and public health orders and provided $5,000 no-interest loans.
The task force also held weekly webinars to connect business owners to state and federal federal resources through the North Coast Small Business Development Corporation and the Small Business Administration.
The contract with Berry Strategy also comes after the city introduced the community to its Economic Development Strategic Action Plan — an “cookbook” with 86 recipes that include revamping Front Street and Beachfront Park and other areas of economic growth.
As part of his contract, Bolton will work with PlanWest Partners, which completed the Economic Development Strategic Action Plan, said City Manager Eric Wier.
According to Wier, in addition to working with companies like Kaiser Permanente, Bolton is also working with Crescent City-based Rumiano Cheese on sales and marketing strategies.
“He does have an understanding of the community and will take that forward as we start moving forward on a new endeavor of being more innovative,” Wier said.
On Monday, Crescent City’s recreation director, Holly Wendt, who helped create the Economic Resiliency Task Force, noted that though the pandemic brought a lot of trauma and stress to business owners, there was also opportunity. She referenced the Tolowa name for the area as a place of plenty.
Rebranding Crescent City isn’t just for tourists, Wendt said, but for the community itself.
“We have everything we need to be a beautiful and wonderful place,” Wendt said. “We have nature. We have hard-working humans. We have a rich culture that goes back for generations, wonderful tribal communities and an opportunity to redefine who we are together from a place of strength.”
Under its contract with the city, Berry Strategy will also attempt to reach out with Del Norte County’s black and indigenous community, particularly business owners and non-profit leaders, according to the city’s staff report.
This will include holding at least three “learning sessions” and create a place to share resources and communicate with each other via the Del Norte Economic Resiliency Task Force website.
The project is expected to be completed in December, according to the staff report.
During the Council’s discussion, Crescent City Mayor Jason Greenough summed up the project’s goal.
“The way I took this is we as a community need to come together and find out who we are as a community,” he said. “That way we can move forward together and find common ground and find common goals and then implement those into projects and figure out how we can work together to better our community.”
Mayor Pro Tem Blake Inscore compared Crescent City’s efforts to rebrand itself to Leavenworth, Washington’s transition from a resource-based economy to one reliant on tourism.
Inscore noted that in the late 1800s, Leavenworth’s economy was dominated by the fur trade, gold, timber and the Great Northern Railway. But by the 1930s, the railroad had been rerouted and the city was on life support, Inscore said.
“After 30 years of trying to make do and looking at empty storefronts, the community leaders said, ‘We got to think outside the box and do something new,’” he said. “It was almost unheard of and I’m sure there were people who thought these people were crazy, but the reinvented themselves as a Bavarian village. Today, they average around 2 million visitors a year.”
That decision, Inscore said, is no different to the changes Crescent City and Del Norte County are needing to make to survive.
“That change may require radical thinking on our part,” he said. “We want our community to not just survive, we want our community to thrive and be something that is a product of dreams, not just a product of trying to make do.”
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