PITTSBURG, Kan. – Christmas is almost here and what better way to celebrate the holidays and promote downtown businesses than a decorating contest.
The Holiday Window Display Contest is a collaboration between the City of Pittsburg and the Downtown Advisory Board. Pittsburg Community Development Specialist Sarah Runyon said the board volunteers wanted to encourage downtown businesses to promote themselves and create festive displays for the holidays.
“The board also felt it was important to give back to the downtown businesses and provide them with advertising dollars to help grow their customer base,” Runyon said. “It was also a goal to engage our local media organizations and create some new partnerships. Making the event a competition is a fun way to accomplish it all.”
Winners of the contest are decided by the public voting for their favorite storefront.
The first place winner receives $3,300 in advertising, second place gets $1,850 in advertising and third place receives $1,200 in advertising. Media partners include Pittsburg Area Chamber of Commerce, KOAMTV, The Morning Sun, AMI Radio, and Murfin (formerly MyTown) Media.
Runyon said this contest encourages community members to walk around and enjoy the displays.
“It adds to the charm and atmosphere of the district and makes people want to visit,” she said. “The contest also encourages people to walk around downtown and visit stores they’ve never seen. We hope the infusion of the advertising dollars will take it to another level and help spotlight some of the amazing businesses we have here in the community.”
Celebrations by Lori Owner Lori Horton, who has been providing Pittsburg with sweet treats for the past 25 years, gave her storefront a candy land-type theme for Christmas.
“I think for businesses that are so very busy sometimes around the holidays, it's easy to sort of lose sight of the fun of it,” she said. “And this sort of helped us get back into the Christmas spirit a little bit and just kind of bring out that little bit of joy that is easy to lose sight of when everybody gets so busy. It's always nice to have something that you can keep everybody involved and everybody in remembering the reason for the season, so to speak.”
Horton said she normally decorates for the season anyway, and the contest gave it a fun spin this year that got their customers involved.
“We have so many regular clients that are part of our lives,” she said. “We watch their kids grow up and are part of all other things. So, to do something like this that really gets our customers on board with it and lets them have a little extra fun supporting us by voting. It's just it kind of helps them sort of feel like they're a part of it too.”
Andrea Ascanio, owner of The Corner Patio said she was excited to decorate the cafe for the holidays and the prizes were a great incentive especially since she was a new business owner.
“It’s definitely a challenge being such a new business basically trying to win a popularity contest with all the votes from people,” she said.
She said her theme was classic Christmas and with a winter wonderland vibe. The garland that hangs outside is made of trimmings from cedar and pine trees that were on her parents’ property that her bother helped her piece together.
“It was definitely a collaborative effort,” she said. “It was literally blood, sweat and tears because my brother cut his hand open and had to have seven stitches.”
Ascanio said some of the inside lights were from a friend’s wedding and that the rest of the decorations were thrifted or passed down from relatives.
“We just love the community and the support we’ve gotten from people from all walks of life. We’re just serving food, but we meet a lot of different people that tell us all kinds of stories and I like to yap with everybody. It’s fun to meet different people from different areas of the community and I haven’t met anybody that isn’t cheering us on.”
This reporting is made possible, in part, by the Support Local Journalism Project Fund. Learn more at: southeastkansas.org/Localnews
