Biz Beat 9-26-2013

The 41st annual Corvallis Fall Festival is this weekend, Sept. 28-29, at Central Park featuring free live music, arts, food, a street dance and a 5/10K run. Many local nonprofits will have booths. Among them, the Corvallis Community Children’s Centers will be holding a silent auction in support of Little Free Libraries, a community movement that offers free books housed in colorful small containers. See corvallischildcare.org and corvallisfallfestival.org.

Oregon Main Street’s annual conference showcasing best practices for downtown revitalization will be Oct. 2-4 in Astoria. This year’s theme will be “Cool Cities: Old Buildings. New Attitudes.” The conference features specialists in downtown economic development, downtown business and tools and techniques for revitalization, such as historic theaters, pop-ups, energy efficiency, historic preservation, local investing, branding, brewpubs, urban renewal, etc. See oregonheritage.org or email sheri.stuart@state.or.us.

Tickets are now on sale for the Healthy Harvest Celebration, a dinner fundraiser and silent auction for the Eugene-based nonprofit Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides. The fifth annual event will begin at 6 pm Saturday, Oct. 5, at the Vets Club Ballroom, 1626 Willamette St. Advance tickets at $35 are available online at wkly.ws/1jl or pesticide.org.

Hallspot is hosting a demo day and website launch party at 2 pm Friday, Sept. 27, at 44 W. Broadway, Suite 430. Founders Sean Thorne and Adam Tirella have raised about $400,000 from investors for the startup social networking site targeting college campuses. See hallspot.com or call (949) 228-2335.

Tim Boyden’s Out on a Limb Gallery is celebrating its second anniversary Oct. 1. “Knot bad, eh?” writes Boyden. “I enjoy feeling I am a small part of the reinvigoration of our downtown and local at that.” The gallery is at 191 E. Broadway and Boyden is usually there Thursday through Saturday afternoons and Sundays from 9 am to 3 pm.

Nikos Ridge, co-founder and CEO of Ninkasi, met with Gov. John Kitzhaber Sept. 18 to talk about how Oregon’s 149 breweries are pumping $2.8 billion into the state’s economy each year. Ninkasi is releasing “Oregon Beer,” a promotional pale ale, and has donated 40 cases of the brew, made from Northwest ingredients, for the state to use in foreign and domestic trade shows.

The Materials Exchange Center for Community Arts (MECCA) has named Heather Campbell as its new executive director, following the resignation of Mija Andrade who has left to “pursue her work as an artist, entrepreneur and mother,” says Liz Lawrence, MECCA’s board president. The organization works to divert usable materials out of the waste stream and into creative endeavors in the community. Campbell was previously director of the Bohemia Mining Days festival in Cottage Grove and has served on several arts and cultural boards.

Direction Service, a Eugene nonprofit that helps families in Lane County deal with disability issues involving children, youth and young adults, has been awarded another five years of federal funding for operating the Center for Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Special Education program (CADRE). The program provides technical assistance to state education agencies nationwide, along with early intervention agencies and parent advocacy centers. The funding for the national program amounts to $650,000 a year, independent from the local programs, according to Marshall Peter, director of CADRE and executive director of Direction Service. See directionservice.org.

A CORRECTION: Last week in this column we wrote that EWEB currently offers $500 rebates on ductless heat pumps, but we heard from Joe Harwood at EWEB that the utility “reached its conservation goals in March and suspended its rebate and zero- and low-interest loan programs for energy conservation. So at this moment, EWEB is not offering rebates for ductless heat pumps. We anticipate some limited rebates will be offered in the fourth quarter of 2013, ahead of a recalibrated roll-out of various conservation programs for 2014.”

A Note From the Publisher

Dear Readers,

The last two years have been some of the hardest in Eugene Weekly’s 43 years. There were moments when keeping the paper alive felt uncertain. And yet, here we are — still publishing, still investigating, still showing up every week.

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We’ve also continued to deepen the coverage that sets Eugene Weekly apart, including our in-depth reporting on local real estate development through Bricks & Mortar — digging into what’s being built, who’s behind it and how those decisions shape our community.

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