North Adams Pushing For Votes as Deadline LoomsStaff Reports,
06:32PM / Tuesday, February 14, 2017 | |
 Posing with the Empire State Building at the Mohawk Theater on Tuesday to rally votes for #MyNorthAdams. |
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — For a few shining moments, North Adams jumped to second place in voting for the Small Business Revolution's Main Street challenge.
And then it was gone.
"It was literally up for three minutes," said Benjamin Lamb, who's helping lead the charge for the city to capture a $500,000 economic development boost. "I think it shows just how close this voting is."
The post on the Small Business Revolution's Facebook page appeared about 3 p.m. showing North Adams as moving up from third to second place among the five finalists. Then it inexplicably disappeared, leaving the latest update on Tuesday with the city still in third place as of 10 a.m.
"There are three days to go, more than 350,000 total votes have been cast, and it is a VERY. TIGHT. RACE," SBR posted on its Facebook page around 4. "Now is the time to kick it into high gear and keep those votes rolling in — it's still anybody's game!"
Voting ends at 9 p.m. on Thursday night, giving the city only two left to amass as many votes as possible. Only one vote can be cast in a 24-hour period, but you can vote once on every device, on every browser, every day. (Click here to vote.)
Lamb, the City Council president, and other team members including city Events Coordinator Suzy Helme and Bright Ideas Brewing's Eric Kerns are keeping the pressure on to collect votes.
Helme and Kerns hit the road early Tuesday morning for appearances on WAMC Public Radio in Albany, N.Y; the competition has also been covered over the past couple days by WRSI 93.9 The River, WUPE FM, WNAW, WBEC-FM (Pittsfield), WALB News 10, and WNYT NewsChannel 13.
A snow angel flash mob in the middle of Sunday's blizzard was designed to grab the attention outside media, and that was followed up on Tuesday with a photo op with the Empire State Building model for a proposed model railroad museum currently housed in the vacant Mohawk Theater.
The team's also been trying to get the attention of well-known individuals and celebrities with local and state connections (Paging @ElizabethBanks) who have vast social media connections that could pump up the vote. Wilco, the force behind Solid Sound, is reaching out to is 660,000 Facebook followers and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has added the effort to her Facebook. This city of 13,000 is the only New England community to make the finals, and was selected out of 14,000 nominations from across the country.
The winning community will get $500,000 investment into its downtown and small business community. It will also be featured in the second season of the Small Business Revolution's online series and receive national exposure.
The Small Business Revolution, an initiative of Minnesota-based Deluxe Corp., has been all about reinvigorating downtowns and bringing communities together. Voting — every day on every device on every browser — and getting others to share that excitement and voting is what can get North Adams to the top.
You don't have to live in North Adams to vote, any votes are welcome. You don't have to give any personal information, just solve an easy math equation to prove you're human.
"We've truly wanted to start a revolution across the country getting people to support more small businesses," Deluxe Corp.'s Amanda Brinkman said in an interview shortly after the finalists were announced last week. "Now it's in the hands of America who will get the $500,000 revitalization."
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