Valentine’s weekend offered a welcome boost to the city’s retailers and services sector with romances and roses a plenty. Lots of businesses entered into the spirit with offers, special menus and window displays. Regardless of your thoughts on what some people believe is an ‘over commercialised day” – calendar hooks such as this do tend to help businesses especially at quieter times of the year. The Newry BID (Business Improvement District) delegation attended a two day study tour last week to Rugby BID Shrewsbury BID and Birmingham City which has 11 successful BIDs in operation. We are looking forward to hearing from the team about what we can take out of these initiatives to help improve Newry City Centre. Recently Nicole Curran from PKF-FPM was appointed President of Newry Junior Chamber. Nicole is an excellent ambassador for this area and for the business community. We would like to congratulate Nicole and look forward to continue working with Newry Chamber going forward. Our CEO Orla Jackson attended the ‘Town Centre Futures Conference in Bangor this week bringing back some interesting information about how the future of towns and city centres are shaping up. Orla and I will also be attending a presentation to local Chambers from Newry, Mourne and Down Council on their ‘Economic, Regeneration, Vision and investment Strategy’ later this month. We are looking forward feeding into the strategy for growth in this area going forwards.
We have a fantastic, informal networking event race night at Dundalk Stadium coming up on Friday February 17 with Dundalk Chamber of Commerce. It offers members and non-members the chance to network, meet business people from Dundalk and have a great evening out. ‘Race Night will commence at 5.45pm and costs £10pp for Chamber members and £20pp for non-members (VAT included). This includes entry to the stadium and a finger buffet.
#Newryhour, our business networking hour on Twitter has been running now for two weeks and has encouraged some fantastic engagement. We have had breaking news with Sugar Supper Club announcing that they are opening another restaurant in nearby Banbridge and celebration with Malone Lynchehaun picking up a national award both of which were announced during #Newryhour. This is a great opportunity for business people tom chat about what is happening locally in the business community and to share news and views. Anyone is welcome to take part simply log onto Twitter on Tuesday nights between 9-10pm, use the hashtag Newryhour and get involved.
For further information please log onto Newrychamber.com or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
Newry Reporter
18th February 2015
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