Evansville’s Wine Walk returns for first time in two years
Wine Walk boosts local economy with proceeds going toward improving downtown area
EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WFIE) - A fun and opportunistic event for businesses took place in downtown Evansville on Friday evening.
Booths were set up along Main Street for the Fall Wine Walk, which allowed people to enjoy their share of music, food and wine.
Josh Armstrong, president of Evansville’s Downtown Economic Alliance, says all of the money from the Wine Walk will go back into downtown to make it a better place for everyone.
“It goes for clean and safe functions, it goes for marketing and branding of downtown Evansville,” Armstrong said. “It helps us help our buildings fill their ground floors with tenants, it helps us attract developers and create a more active and vibrant downtown Evansville.”
Organizers say they want events like this one to bring people out to enjoy what the downtown area has become.
“It helps people be comfortable coming downtown,” Armstrong said. “There’s a lot of people that haven’t been downtown in years, and COVID of course slowed that down. We want people to know it’s not the crazy mix of one-way streets it used to be.”
With $15 per ticket, organizers say the money earned from this event will help bring new businesses to downtown Evansville.
One of those new tenants will be “Your Brother’s Bookstore.”
The brothers, Sam and Adam Morris, don’t officially open up shop until October 1, but they briefly opened their new business during the Wine Walk to meet potential customers.
“A huge priority for us is we want every customer to know all of us, so having that face to face, put the face to the names, we eventually want to know all of our customers,” Sam said. “Whenever they come in, we’ll tell them ‘Hey, you read this last week, you should read this.’”
The Morris brothers have lived all over the country, but they say Evansville is their home base.
“We decided we wanted to make the book store that we were missing,” Sam said. “The kind of place that we found all over the place, we wanted to bring that to Evansville, to Main Street.”
The brothers say the Wine Walk was a valuable opportunity to get them started.
“We’re very excited to become a part of the community,” Adam said. “We want to become a staple in downtown’s revitalization.”
Officials say the wine at the event is from Oliver Winery in Bloomington.
Organizers say the money is also going to some new decorations for downtown, which city residents can expect to see during Halloween and Christmas.
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