By Tracy Ouellette
SLN STAFF
After an embattled year regarding its funding from the Village of East Troy, the East Troy Economic Development Alliance heads into the new year with private funding and a plan.
“We’re continuing to work, we had couple meetings at end of year and a few members are putting their own money into it,” Alliance Vice-President Ted Zess said. “We’re not going anywhere. We’ve got a good group of local business people who do development in East Troy. We’ve all done projects in our own companies and we’re all wiling to help other companies do the same thing.
Zess said the alliance will be promoting the events that went well last year and adding a few new things into the mix.
“Our main focus in on the Connect Communities initiative, the First Fridays event, the Giant Postcard Project and the state wide Community Open House in May,” he continued.
The postcard project will be a public art project with a social media aspect, Zess said.
“We’re going to have these giant 4-by-8-foot painted murals that we’re going to place throughout the community,” he explained. “There will be different themes and we’ll also have them at activities in East Troy like bike race.”
Zess said the goal was to have people search out the postcards and take their picture with them and post the photos to social media sited.
“It’s been done in other communities in the state and we thought it would be a great thing for East Troy,” Zess said.
The alliance will be working with the East Troy Community School District art department to get the local students involved. It will also be approaching local businesses to sponsor the postcards.
“We’re starting a contest in either January or February to get artwork,” Zess said. “We don’t have all the locations for the postcards yet, but we’re thinking maybe three or four in or around the square. Shell has offered to put one up and we’ll talk to places like Wisconsin Oven and a few other locations like Booth Lake Park and Michael Fields.”
Zess said the organization is also continuing to work with the Walworth County Economic Development Alliance to “keep the lines of communication open” for any possible businesses looking to expand into the East Troy area. He said right now, they’re being conservative with their finances, but was confident they were in good shape for the coming year.
“We have a commitment of at least $2,000 form private parties and we’re hoping for a bit more,” Zess said. “We’re working with WCEDA to keep costs down with some of their programs; it should be enough to keep us going for a while.”
The ETCDA is run by a seven-member board – President Paul Nyffeler, Vice-President Zess, Secretary Linda Kaplan, Mary Ni coson, Jim Rohrer, John Jacoby and Jeff Standafer.
For more information contact any of the board members at easttroybusiness.com.
