Greetings and welcome to Friday! This weekend is Memorial Day weekend – a time to honor those who have been lost in service to our country. It is also the official start of grilling season and “Boy, 101 sure seems crowded!” tourist season. May your grill heat evenly, and may you avoid left turns on 101!

 

Last Saturday was the Donor Celebration Event at the Aquarium. What a wonderful event and just incredible to see all of the improvements to such an important anchor institution for both our community and our economy. All told, capital projects totaled over $30 million (the original estimate was much less than that) – hats off to Carrie and her crew for doing truly transformative work!!

 

Over the weekend, Paul is helping out Depoe Bay’s 80th annual Fleet of Flowers Memorial Day ceremony. This year, organizers are presenting a free concert on Sunday at 4pm (in front of the Coast Guard station) – Paul is the opening act (old-school acoustic blues) followed by Johnny Wheels and the Swamp Donkeys (if you like blues-rock – come check them out – they are AMAZING!!). Bring chairs and a cooler! Paul will be running the sound for the official ceremony on Monday beginning at 11am (Depoe Bay Coast Guard Station).

 

Here’s our weekly team update:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support
      • CCFW – Sarah continued to assist the CCFW staff with interviews for their Community Foods & Market Coordinator position and attended an executive committee meeting.
      • City of Newport – Paul spoke at Monday’s City Council meeting in support of the City applying for an ICMA Economic Mobility Special Assistant grant program. If funded, EDALC would be a key partner in that work. The council unanimously approved applying for the grant. Sarah put together some ideas for potential projects for increasing economic mobility.
      • Oregon Coast Community College – On Wednesday night, the OCCC Budget Committee met to review and discuss the FY25-26 budget for the College (Paul is part of the Committee since he is on the OCCC Board of Education). It was a masterclass in staff preparation and delivering and explaining a complex budget in an understandable fashion, and it worked very well – after some meaningful discussion, it was passed unanimously on the first vote.
      • City of Yachats – On Wednesday, Paul gave an EDALC Overview presentation to the Yachats City Council. There have been several new councilors since EDALC’s last presentation to Yachats, so the timing was great.
  • City of Toledo – On Tuesday, Stacie survived her second year of City of Toledo and URA budget review and approval. She was able to flex her project management skills and helped keep the committee meeting to one session. 
      • Creative Economies Playbook for Lincoln County (funded by Northwest Oregon Works) Stacie worked on content, and will be able to make this her primary focus next week now that the first phase of the O2IH project is done.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • Grant Prospecting – Paul met with Rural Prosperity Partners to plan the next round of grants programs to evaluate. In early June, Paul will be meeting with Rozalyn Mock of the Ford Family Foundation to explore potential matching funds in support of an EDA feasibility grant to plan a Lincoln County business incubator.
  • O2IH Website – Stacie set up the mailing list, brand kit, and welcome email in Mailchimp. She also made some resource additions and content updates and the site is LIVE! We will not be publicizing the site until the O2IH board members have a chance to review, but you can take a look here https://o2ih.org/ . The project, from initial work on the RFP to now, took about 9 months to complete.
  • Entrepreneurship
      • Cascades West Innovation Hub – Paul worked with RAIN Catalysts and Collaborative EDO on various aspects of the next CWIH grant application (due to Business Oregon on Tuesday). Paul also drafted a letter of commitment (with editing help from the team) for EDALC to serve as the Lincoln County Regional Lead organization for the Hub over the next two years.
  • ROI Video – On Wednesday and Thursday, Sarah took the TZOM film crew around the county doing interviews and portraits of local business owners. The final video should be on Business Oregon’s youtube page and shared with us by the end of next month, we’re really excited to see the finished product!
  • Core Economic Development Services
      • Oregon Prospector – Sarah updated listings on Oregon Prospector and added new ones.
      • Website Update – Sarah updated the statistics on the “county profile” section of the EDALC website. 
  • Community Connecting
  • Porthole Players B.o.a.T.S. 10-minute Play Festival – Leslie highly recommends seeing this emotional rollercoaster of a festival, including Jason Holland as an actor and director in two different plays! Held in the PAC’s recently renovated “black box” theater in the round, these 8 pieces represent a variety of styles and perspectives, selected from a global prompt for 10-minute plays, “Based on a True Story.” I attended last Saturday’s performance which invited two of the playwrights and all the directors to have a conversation with the audience after the plays. It was another example of the world-class performance and art venues in Lincoln County continuing to bring in and support creative professionals for the benefit of locals and visitors alike. Take-home point: Fit this incredible experience into your weekend before the series ends! While you’re there, be an enthusiastic audience member – laugh, cheer, cry, and have a wonderful time supporting local arts!
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
  • Stacie posted Friday community roundup and shared relevant partner/regional posts on various social media channels.
  • Project Work
  • Project Work – Stacie continued to work on the annual meeting. She met with Rowan and Cole of Raised by Wolves Victualing Co. about the menu on Wednesday. Paul and Leslie joined her for a quick meeting at Primaltones yesterday to discuss entertainment, decor and beverage logistics. If you haven’t reserved your spot(s) yet, you can do that here!
  • Admin
  • SAM Update – Paul updated EDALC’s federal System of Award Management (SAM) registration early in the week. By week’s end, everything checked out and our registration will remain active for another year.
  • Secretary of State Update – Paul updated EDALC’s business registration with the Secretary of State, both for the “Lincoln County Economic Development Corp[oration” (the legal entity) and for EDALC (a registered dba.
  • Georgia Pacific Grant – Paul wrote and submitted an invited grant to Georgia Pacific to receive some of their 2025 Community Spending Plan dollars for several key projects.
  • Website – Stacie updated the Board of Directors profiles section as well as the Community & Economic Development Grant section of the Grants Resources page. Emails were sent to Walter and Marshall for bio approval.

 

As a reminder, EDALC’s Executive Committee will be meeting via Zoom on June 3rd at 3pm (to discuss our draft budget) and our budget approval super-short Board of Directors meeting will be on Thursday, June 5th (current speed record goes to Birgitte’s budget meeting in 2023 – under 5 minutes!).

 

That’s it for this week. Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Keep us posted if you have anything you want us to share, and don’t be stingy with your ideas – we love hearing from you! Have a wonderful holiday weekend!

 

Cheers,

 

-The EDALC Team (Paul, Sarah, Leslie and Stacie)