Foley Main Street Awarded, Honors Riviera Utilities

Community foundation Foley Main Street was awarded twice at the eighth annual Main Street Alabama Awards of Excellence last week. The first award, for “Promotion,” honored the organization for “creating a quality authentic event that generates traffic for the district,” Foley Main Street said. Its Snowbird Coffee event, in Foley, is a partnership with the City of Foley and South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce. With its last iteration being impacted by both COVID-19 and Hurricane Sally, the typical indoor event was converted to “an inverted parade” with stations to drive through to pick up coupons, scavenger hunt sheets and instructions, refreshments and information packets. The second award was for “Excellence in Public Relations,” recognizing Main Street organizations that developed an effective public relations program of work. For it, Foley Main Street was recognized for its Downtown Foley Branding public relations campaign. This involved 11 focus groups with an average of seven to 10 people and a social media countdown for 21 days with 21 different words used by focus group attendees to describe Downtown Foley. Local TV stations and newspapers covered the ensuing “Branding Reveal,” which garnered high numbers of likes, shares and views.
Foley Main Street chose Riviera Utilities, also of Foley, as its 2020 Main Street Hero. General Manager Tom DeBell and former employee Sherry Sullivan served on Foley Main Street’s inaugural board, as did Riviera Utilities board member Barbara Ingram, who continues to serve. Additionally, it supported Foley Main Street’s Support Local Restaurants campaign by placing 10-plus weekly orders from local restaurants for more than three months. Riviera Utilities also challenged other businesses to support downtown restaurants and organize group lunches for their employees.