Third Thursdays growing in popularity
Page 4 • Wednesday, December 18, 2013 • The Hammonton Gazette
THIRD, from Page 2
really received well. the cultural ones are really big…We know that cultural impact is
both festive with music. it is an easy one to
rally around,” iacovelli said.
according to iacovelli, the committee is
keeping all of its themes for next year with
the exception of two changes. She stated that
they, along with the help of the downtown
business owners are doing a great job in making these events a success, despite budget
constraints.
“We are changing the ‘Ghost’ theme and
changing the ‘Love Stockton.’ We are replacing those with a harvest and replacing the
love thing that is usually after Valentine’s
Day with ‘that’s amore.’ We liked the other
themes. We felt the other themes had really
good things that we could build off of. We
have a really modest budget. it is amazing
that we put on what we do considering that,
and it is a credit to our downtown merchants
to continually be creative and buy into what
we are trying to do,” iacovelli said.
though iacovelli is pleased with the
growth of third thursday events, she believes there is room for additional improvements.
“i think resource acquisition would allow
us to have a more dynamic presence with entertainment. entertainment has a cost so we
are modest in where we allocate our limited
resources. i think in my years in working in
activities, before i even came to Hammonton,
it takes years to build a tradition. We have a
great turnout for Cruisin’ MainStreet but we
have offered that for 19 years. We
have only been doing third thursday for about three years. i think you
have to do something for five years.
i think our business owners are becoming more and more creative, and
i think if we have had more money
to really offer complementary entertainment of great quality, that would
be the only thing we would really
need to do,” iacovelli said.
Mary Young, the owner of Chatter’s Baskets, at 8 e. Central ave.,
participates in the third thursday
events each month. Young thinks it
has developed into a great tradition
for the town, but had some suggestions to make it an even better experience for the business merchants.
“i think there are activities that go
on early in t