Helping Happy Valley campaign aims to support Centre County businesses through a ‘hard storm’
Amy Farkas doesn’t think Centre County businesses are left for dead despite facing challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic. But “supporting the home team” requires a group effort, the Harris Township manager said.
Formed in response to the Big Ten’s decision to delay fall sports, Helping Happy Valley is a program geared toward helping businesses that are struggling amid the coronavirus outbreak. The initiative will include partnerships with the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County, Downtown State College Improvement District, Centre County government, the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau, Penn State and community volunteers.
Farkas presented the idea to the Centre Region Council of Governments on Monday and received approval to move forward with the initiative.
“Instead of thinking that we’re written off for dead, perhaps this is an opportunity where we could take a leadership moment and try to help our business community through what’s been a very hard storm for them to date and what is going to get harder because of no football,” she said.
Each municipality is being asked to support the program and appoint a representative to serve on a committee that will lead marketing and financial efforts.
“(Alumni) love to support State College,” Farkas said. “They love to support Penn State, so why not create a marketing campaign with a brand, a logo and a hashtag that we could then use across all of the platforms to promote the region and our businesses?”
Some ideas in the works for Helping Happy Valley include promoting retail stores for online shopping to purchase Penn State gear and organizing virtual events in honor of the White-Out Game and homecoming.
COG members said they would continue to support the initiative as long as its goals were carried out in compliance with local and state health guidelines, meaning it would not promote immediate visits to the area as officials are still monitoring COVID-19 case data with Penn State’s reopening.
For now, Farkas said the campaign is focused on no-contact promotions and marketing-based approaches to supporting the local economy.
State College Borough Councilwoman Theresa Lafer stressed the importance of inclusivity and outreach to communities beyond the borough.
“I don’t care if it’s somebody who’s figured out how to make masks or if it’s somebody who would like to do ... yoga in the park or their fitness classes across Old Main’s front lawn,” Lafer said. “It’s very easy, when you talk about small businesses, to think about the storefronts. We tend to forget that there are a lot of tiny one- and two-person ones.”
Following permission to move ahead with the proposal, Farkas will update COG members on progress at a later date.
“The time to act is now. We don’t have the luxury of time on this, as businesses will be hurting in real-time,” Farkas said. “We ideally need to start rolling out pieces of this by mid-September.”
This story was originally published August 25, 2020 at 12:11 PM.
