Busy year for business group

By the time you read this the Hastings City Business Association AGM will be over. For me as I write this now I’m neck deep in preparations. As well as all the budgets and board elections, once a year I get to stand up in front of our membership and tell them about all the things we did last year, and boy was it a long list!

We helped make Fringe in the ‘Stings 2017 happen as well as putting on six Harcourts Hastings City Night Markets and creating and distributing a new version of our Eat and Drink Guide.

Thousands of kids visited Santa in the Hastings City Winter Wonderland and we gave away thousands of dollars worth of prizes in the Countdown to Christmas promotion. We put Christmas Bauble stickers up all over town and handed out hundreds of Christmas trees for our retailers to decorate and display and our Christmas parking elves were out spreading cheer and topping up parking meters.

We had another sellout Tremains Hastings City Hamper Auction and for the first time we ran the Hastings City Madness in the Mall Market through until 8pm. We partnered with the Art Deco Trust for the hugely popular Art Deco Fashion Flaunt and had demonstrations and live music throughout town.

We joined forces with the Hastings District Library to help out with Harry Potter Book Day and brought some magic to Civic Square for an afternoon.

We made sure that Albert Square was pumping with live music on Thursdays and Fridays throughout summer, and the chess set and Imagination Playground were out for kids to play with.

We took to the streets with the Hastings City Bunny Adventure and Bunny Hop where kids searched for bunny stickers hidden all over town.

Our Wednesday Winner Facebook competition had us giving away amazing prizes every week (don’t worry, we’ll be back for Christmas) and Winter Deco was another sell out success.

And of course most recently, we had our Celebration Awards, with a massive dome marquee set up in the middle of Albert Square. That was just a fraction of the events we ran last year, as well as the general business of advocating for and supporting our local businesses.

I’d like to say we get a break now, but we’re already gearing up for another busy year.