Meadow Drive Press Releases - the Heart of Vail Village

Meadow Drive Partnership Celebrates First Year of Accomplishments

Vail, Colorado, March 11 - The Meadow Drive Partnership is celebrating it's first year of collaboration and accomplishments and is planning for another year of great events on the street they have dubbed "Vail's Main Street."

The brain child of Meadow Drive resident Rick Scalpello, the Meadow Drive Partnership has pulled together landlords and business owners in a collaborative effort to promote the highly important, but often overlooked, Meadow Drive business district. The members of the Partnership share costs and workloads in an effort that has been looked upon as one possible solution to solving Vail's business woes.

"We had an image problem," Scalpello explains. "Most people viewed Meadow Drive as a transit corridor between Lionshead and the Village Core. But there are over eighty businesses here! We needed to figure out a way of letting people know that, giving them another reason to come to Vail and to get off the bus once they're here."

The Partnership's solutions have ranged from the basic to the creative. A logo and the "Vail's Main Street" moniker were created to give the business district an identity. The logo went up on storefronts, newspaper and TV ads and on maps that described the street and the businesses on it.

Next, the Partnership went to work on events that would highlight the businesses of the neighborhood while drawing traffic to it. The guided Meadow Drive Art Walks were designed to augment the long-standing, self-guided Vail Art Walks, and culminate with a visit to a different Meadow Drive restaurant each week.

"The art walks have been a great way for people to get to know the galleries and to share their love of art," says Meadow Drive Art Walk organizer and Karat's owner, Dan Telleen.

With the Art Walks up and running, highlighting the galleries and restaurants, the Partnership went to work on rounding out its program. Scalpello learned that some years before, Jonathan Staufer, a Meadow Drive business and property owner, had approached the Town of Vail to do a Farmers' Market on Meadow Drive. The sitting Town Council had turned Staufer down at the time, but Scalpello, reading that the current Council was open to trying new things, urged him to try again.

The Vail Farmers' Market was born last summer to rave reviews. It is the most visible demonstration to date that the Meadow Drive Partnership's efforts would be helpful not only to Meadow Drive, but to Vail as a whole. Several thousand visited the market each Sunday to enjoy the tastes and smells of fresh Colorado products. Vail's finest restaurants handed out free samples. Members of the Vail Town Council set up shop in the "Community Corner" to discuss politics with visitors and residents. Jugglers and musicians, organized by the Vail Chamber, added to the festive atmosphere.

"We had some folks visiting from Austria who were on their way to Denver," Staufer says. "They ended up booking rooms at the Sitzmark because they had never seen anything like the Vail Farmers' Market in the States before. Our vendors, some of whom attended the Dillon and Minturn markets on Saturday, stayed at hotels around town."

Not done yet, the Meadow Drive Partnership also gave Vail its first Italian Festival, a weekend event that filled out Vail's event calendar between Labor Day weekend and Oktoberfest Vail.

In December, the Partnership chalked up another Vail first with the inauguration of the Vail Holiday Fair. An offshoot of the Sonnenalp Resort's popular "German Family Christmas," the event sought to increase business during Thanksgiving and Christmas.

"We wanted to turn day skiers into shoppers," Staufer explains, "to give those thousands of skiers who would otherwise be driving back to the Front Range another reason to stay in Vail." The Fair combined a number of unrelated holiday activities with an outdoor market to create a festival. The event met with success and praise, and coincided with another of Scalpello's efforts to have a holiday tree lighting in a different section of Vail every weekend.

The members of the Meadow Drive Partnership say they've learned a lot this first year, knowledge that they're going to use to take their efforts to the next level, and knowledge that they're willing to share with other Vail neighborhoods and other communities.

Staufer, who also serves on the Board of the American Independent Business Alliance, an organization that helps small, locally-owned businesses compete in an age of corporate hegemony, says that the efforts of the Meadow Drive Partnership are one possible blueprint, not only for Vail, but for other communities facing similar challenges.

"What Vail has going for it are its charm and uniqueness in an age of mind-numbing sameness," Staufer says. "Independent business provide vitality to our community. The hard work, commitment and accomplishments of the businesses and property owners participating in the Meadow Drive Partnership are further proof that a little effort to highlight that charm and uniqueness can go a long way."