A year in review
2023 was a year to remember! We loved every minute spent enjoying this community living room we call Downtown Mount Vernon. We can’t wait for the celebrations, traditions, and new beginnings to come in 2024.
Here are some of the things that we we want to remember about 2023!
We supported the efforts of our incredible community partners to put on events like Illuminight, Valley Made Market, and Summer Concert Series up on the Riverwalk Plaza.
We love the way these events celebrate what is special and beautiful about the place we live, and how they bring our community together.
We hosted a successful 39th Annual Tulip Festival Street Fair, which brought more than 22,000 people into our downtown. This success was only possible with the help of our partners at the City of Mount Vernon and dozens of our incredible community volunteers.
We welcomed 8 new businesses!
We welcomed Riverline Cabinetry & Flooring, The Skagit Table, Ca Phe Song, Tacos La Patrona, Pegasus Pie Company, Made & Found Market, Modern Country Living, and Tori Tornado Creative. We celebrated the expansions of elSage Design, Astraea Bridal, The Town Seamstress and Lost in the Groove.
Our incredible committee volunteers brought Arte de los Ninos /
Children’s Art Walk back to downtown.
Following the COVID hiatus, it was wonderful to see kids and their families downtown, to encourage creative expression in the next generation, and share the results of the important work our arts teachers are doing with the younger members of our community.
We hosted a successful Summer Sips event, inviting people into our downtown for a delightful evening of savoring sips and our seasonal weather. Sunny but not too warm, it was the perfect way to share in a summer Saturday night!
We celebrated downtown accomplishments during the 2nd Annual Washington Main Street Week.
Held at the Skagit Table, we brought together board members, committee members, and and community stakeholders to celebrate all the accomplishments we’ve achieved together. We were joined by representatives from the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, including Executive Director Chris Moore and Development Director Kristy Conrad.
We celebrated one year at the LIDO Collective!
April 2023 brought the first birthday of the LIDO Collective, our economic development initiative in the historic former Lido Theatre building. We are proud to represent over 60 local artists in at the LIDO, and look forward to adding more artists and new experiences in that space - stay tuned and watch it grow!
The LIDO Collective received an Excellence on Main Street Award!
MVDA staff traveled to Vancouver, WA for the RevitalizeWA conference and received the award for the Economic Vitality program of 2023. The annual Excellence on Main Awards recognize outstanding projects from throughout the state’s Main Street network of communities. This is the third Excellence on Main award that has been given in our downtown, and the first award to the MVDA.
We ate lots of candy and saw hundreds of great costumes at the annual 1st Street Trick or Treat!
This year’s Halloween gave us perfect weather for a lovely, sunny stroll down South 1st Street, collecting candy from all of our Downtown businesses. The Lincoln Theatre hosted a Photo Booth staffed by wonderful volunteers, and there were lots of other photo ops as well!
We saw many creative iterations of the Pop Mount Vernon.
One of our Pop-Up guests (Tori Tornado) even went on to open her own brick and mortar downtown - right next door!
We shopped small!
And you did, too! Several of our businesses have reported a much-needed successful holiday season. Keep up your good work, keeping your dollars local!
We sipped & shopped the night away at Ladies Night Out in early December.
By popular demand, we returned to the beloved “Ladies Night Out” name for our winter wine walk, and it was a blast! All were welcome, but people enjoyed finding the familiar name for the fun event.
We celebrated the holiday season with our annual Christmas parade and tree lighting in Pine Square.
Our Christmas Parade was December 3rd, and brought out 3,500 people downtown! We had amazing floats this year and of course, a special appearance by Santa Claus. We lit the tree, listened to carols sung by MVHS Synergy, and drank hot cocoa provided by our fantastic sponsor, WeCu!
We continued the beloved tradition of free showings of “It’s a Wonderful Life” at the Lincoln Theatre the week before Christmas.
We even got to hear from community member Monica Hodges Capra, the granddaughter of the director, Frank Capra!
And that’s a wrap!
Thank you for all the ways you showed up for downtown in 2023. Thank you for shopping local and supporting our small businesses, bringing your families to events (and having a great time), and bringing the proud, positive energy that makes this community so great. We can’t wait to see you downtown in 2024!
