IOWA CITY, Iowa (KWWL) – The Iowa Metropolis Downtown District has been delivering individuals objects from native companies for the final 15 weeks. In the course of the vacation season, it is actually beginning to choose up.
The “Downtown Delivers” program is sponsored by Toyota of Iowa Metropolis and MidwestOne Financial institution. Folks should purchase items by the Downtown District’s virtual Holiday Market and get them delivered free of charge in the event that they reside in North Liberty, Coralville or Iowa Metropolis.
To this point, this system has delivered over 1,500 items to individuals.
“We had been approached by one in every of our retailors downtown –it was most likely again in July or August– saying the subsequent want might be for supply,” Betsy Potter mentioned, director of operations for the conglomeration of native companies.
It helps individuals keep away from crowds –and potential publicity to COVID-19– by staying dwelling and offers a lifeline to native companies.
“We have heard a ton of appreciation from our companies,” Potter mentioned. “With this program, a variety of them have been in a position to preserve their workers masses the identical.”
One other objective of this system is to assist individuals get their items by Christmas, which has been a difficulty with the U.S. Postal Service and UPS getting backed up with vacation orders.
Potter delivered about 25 orders on Friday, some clothes, library books and even chocolate.
“There’s a variety of prospects which can be ordering from a number of shops,” Potter mentioned.
The Christmas model of this system is scheduled to finish on Dec. 22 however because the demand is more likely to keep after the vacations, they’re hoping to restart it in early January.
“We’ll proceed it throughout these darkish months of the winter time the place usually enterprise is slower anyway however throughout this season, we simply do not know what it can entail,” Potter mentioned.
Folks can even ask Iowa Metropolis/Coralville companies in the event that they’re a part of this system when ordering over the telephone and a few companies have a tab about it on their web sites.
