Garage Sale Madness

The Gathering Place behind Serran is just one of the not-for-profits benefiting from the annual DIA Garage Sale

It’s a Saturday morning ritual for folks to head out and navigate city streets in search of garage sale bargains, and today the hunters didn’t have far to travel as the Downtown Improvement Area hosted their annual Main Street Garage Sale.

With 25 street vendors, Jeff Serran , DIA Manager says this was the best year for participants.

“I would say it's successful, it's the biggest number I’ve seen in a while. I don't know about when they first started because I wasn’t around then, but I think we've tripled the vendors compared to last year.”

“What's nice about this, is that it is a true community event. It’s always been a community event, but in the sense that we have opened it up to the general public as well, so we have our DIA members, we have our non-profit organisations, and we've opened it up to the general public and others out of our boundaries as well,” he says.

The merchants look forward to the traffic the event brings to the DIA as it offers an opportunity to help the not-for-profit s with their fund raising, and it also brings awareness to the downtown.

“When they're down here and there looking around and they'll say "Oh look at that, there is a new store opened up," and you know how many new stores and new businesses that we've had come open in the last little while.”

“So it' s a way for them to give back to the community. We don't look at it as competition for the stores, because the stores are all involved with it and they have the final say,” he states.

The DIA has a committee from the membership devoted to planning the day and they view the giant yard sale as a true community event for the Bay.

“Everything that we do here is not just for the downtown, but it's for the whole city as a whole. And it brings it in the tourist from outside, and people get to see what the businesses are and it will remind them a just how great the downtown really is,” states Serran.