DCA fighting ‘epidemic of loneliness’ one event at a time

With its array of seasonal and monthly events, the Downtown Camas Association (DCA) regularly draws hundreds of visitors to Camas’ historic downtown shopping and dining district.

But the DCA can always do more to promote Camas’ downtown to a wider range of people, DCA Executive Director Carrie Schulstad told Camas officials earlier this month.

“There is an epidemic of loneliness,” Schulstad told Camas City Council members during the Council’s Sept. 3 workshop, citing United States Office of the Surgeon General statistics that show half of Americans report feeling lonely and less than 20% feel connected to their communities.

“That feels tragic to us,” Schulstad said of the statistics. “We’re figuring out some strategies to help people feel more engaged, more connected.”

The question DCA staff are asking, Schulstad said, is, “How do we get more people from Camas coming into downtown Camas more often to engage in more meaningful ways?”

Some visitors to the DCA monthly First Friday events — which occur from 5 to 8 p.m. on the first Friday of every month and regularly feature family friendly activities combined with extended-hours shopping and dining, art gallery receptions and new business ribbon-cuttings — have told DCA staff that they consider themselves “First Friday friends,” Schulstad said, explaining that they may live or work in Camas, but only ever see each other only during First Friday events.

In April, the DCA hosted its first, student-led Camas Asian Cultural Fair, which Schulstad said attracted “lots and lots of people who had never been to a First Friday before.”

Likewise, during the group’s second annual ComicCon First Friday, held in August, the DCA recorded 87 new visitors, including 32 families who came to the event from Portland.

“We have a number of families who come every First Friday from Portland, but this brought a wider variety of them,” Schulstad said.

And, of course, those numbers are only the visitors who stop by the DCA booth inside Journey Church during the First Friday events to register for the First Friday passport program that offers chances to win merchant-sponsored prize baskets.

“We have an average of 250 people that do those (passports) every First Friday,” Schulstad said. “It gets them into participating businesses. And we see an average of 49 new people registering at First Friday each month.”

She said the group’s Summer Nights Sips and Bites event in August was sold out again this year and that people spent around $13,000 in downtown Camas businesses during that event within just a few hours.

Camas Councilwoman Marilyn Boerke, who acts as a Council liaison for the DCA, noted some of the group’s recent accomplishments in the presentation to Council on Sept. 3, including $18,000 in facade improvement grants to local businesses that resulted in an overall investment of $62,000 in downtown facade improvements; lighting upgrades to 20 buildings, including new LED lighting at the historic Liberty Theatre and a $15,000 lighting project on Cedar Street; a strong volunteer program that has seen 276 unique volunteers and more than 2,500 volunteer hours over the past year; a business tour with the Camas High School DECA club; and the opening or re-opening of 12 new businesses over the past year, including two art galleries, wine shops, counseling and acupuncture clinics, Painless Ric’s Tattoo Studio and the new Camas Cheese Co.

“There is a lot of networking in downtown Camas,” Boerke said. “Carrie gets calls all the time from people considering investing and opening their own shop. There is a lot of energy out there … and a lot of conversations occurring on a daily basis.”

Schulstad thanked the City for kicking off its downtown Camas subarea planning project and said the DCA was working to increase its marketing to increase Camas residents’ engagement in their downtown area. In the future, she said, the group would like to have targeted television and streaming advertisements, direct mailers, targeted social media posts and enhanced events that gave more Camasonians a reason to visit downtown Camas.