Local businesses in Uptown Collinsville participate in the inaugural “First Thursday”
By Devese “Dee” Ursery
COLLINSVILLE — Uptown Collinsville is presenting a free monthly after hours event that is geared toward bringing more people to Main Street.
The inaugural “First Thursday,” on Apr. 4 was an event where local businesses entertain regular and possible new customers from 5-8 p.m. with food and drink specials, sales, entertainment and giveaways.
Afton Dusek, owner of Lou Belle & Bing said the idea came about because of her experiences in other cities that she’s lived in previously.
“I’ve lived in Portland and Chicago; and both cities had a similar event that they would do once a month,” Dusek said. “They were based in areas of town that had a lot of art galleries and a good art scene.”
Dusek said that art galleries would stay open late and have something like an open house where they would offer refreshments.
“It was a really great way to get the community out and about and shopping in that area and really just appreciating what that community had to offer,” Dusek continued.
Dusek is looking to bring that same excitement and attention to Uptown Collinsville by introducing “First Thursday” to the area’s businesses. She said that the other businesses that participated in the event were excited to join.
“A lot of the businesses like bars and restaurants would already be open during the event hours, it’s just that they would offer specials to kind of correlate with the event,” Dusek said. “There’s really little risk for those businesses that are normally closed during that time, they were still very excited about trying it.”
Dusek added that every business that participated was willing to put in the effort to make this a recurring successful event. She believes that the event went really well considering the cold temperatures of that evening.
“We were also kind if competing with the Cardinals opening day, that’s a big day for St. Louis, so there were a lot of baseball lovers that had other plans already in place,” Dusek said. “We’re happy that we were able to get it started in April that way, maybe by the time summer weather comes around it’s gonna be like a very successful and well attended event.”
Dusek said that she let all of the local businesses know that they were welcome to participate every month or choose the months that they want to participate. She said that the time slot would remain mostly the same, but the events might be slightly different every month with the option to choose when they wish to participate.
“We ourselves, plan to be part of it every month, as long as there’s no conflicting thing on our calendar,” Dusek said. “We want to make it a year-round thing, weather pending, but that’s the plan.”
It’s a free event that has something for all ages, according to Dusek. She said It’s really a fun thing for visitors to plan their own route of where they would maybe want to start at or finish at, it’s really customizable. Visitors can do something different one month than they will the next month. “There’s more on Collinsville Main Street than I think people realize, so I think this is gonna be really good,” Dusek continued.
Susan Miles, owner of Miles Market on Main said the event was a great idea for businesses on the other end of Main Street opposite the bars and restaurants. She said they joined the event to get more people to visit the other end of Main Street to see what they have to offer.
“We’re open until 6 p.m. so we were open only a couple of hours, but we did make more sales and we had people come in that had not been in before,” Miles said. “It was cold last night, so I think as the weather warms up and more businesses are able to participate, it’s just going to get better every time.”
Miles said the event is a great idea because it introduces more people to the other end of Main Street where they have barbershops and hair salons as well as a couple of gift shops among other businesses.
“When they have the festivals down here we get all the walk by traffic, so for us on this end of Main Street we have to work a little harder,” Miles said. “We thought it was a great idea and that’s why we did it.”
Miles said the community should show up because there are a lot of good shops on Main Street in Collinsville and they’d like to make it a place where people would like to come and hang out.
Dusek said she really hopes that the members of our community who haven’t shopped with those businesses, that this event introduces new customers to their businesses.
“The idea of First Thursdays is to create a recurring event dedicated to supporting the small, family owned businesses in our community,” Dusek said. “It’s one night a month to get out and see what these businesses have to offer, and a night for us to show our gratitude for the support we receive from our community.”
