Main Street Association gets new home

The Oak Harbor Main Street Association will have a new home.

By Luisa Loi • April 2, 2024 1:30 am

Soon, the Oak Harbor Main Street Association will have a new home, where it will help new business owners test their ideas with some peace of mind.

The new location at 881 Southeast Pioneer Way will host the association’s office and two business incubators within the next few weeks, according to Executive Director Margaret Livermore.

As Livermore explained, incubators offer prospective business owners the opportunity to rent a space for a short period of time to determine whether their idea is successful or not. This eliminates the stress of committing to a one- or two-year lease when there is a chance the business won’t be profitable.

The idea, she said, came up during meetings with other main street associations that have already adopted the incubator model.

The incubators are available for retail business owners only, who will occupy the incubators for a limited amount of time, paying a fee for the space and a fee for utilities.

The two incubators are about 225 and 240 square feet and are connected by a door inside.

Livermore said the association is still trying to decide how often a contract can be renewed within that six-month period. If there are more prospective tenants on a waitlist to lease the space, the association might cap the trial time at six months.

“It’ll just add something different every six months downtown,” Livermore said.

If the incubators are vacant during the holidays, they could be used for holiday markets.

The association’s hope is that if the business is successful, it will move out to a more permanent location.

Livermore and Marketing Coordinator Teresa Besaw said the association has long outgrown its current location, a 350-square-foot office located inside the Harborside Village mall on Pioneer Way.

On top of the incubator stores, the 2,200-square-foot facility features a meeting room, a space for storage, an office for the director and an information area for visitors exploring downtown.

“It will be nice to have a bigger space that we don’t feel crammed in,” Livermore said.

The meeting room can also be used by other boards, like the Oak Harbor Music Festival Board, Livermore and Besaw said.

In addition to the new facility, Livermore and Besaw are looking forward to the completion of Serendipity Lane, a $200,000 terracotta-colored walkway that will connect Pioneer Way to the waterfront and to more parking on Bayshore Drive. The project is expected to be completed by the end of spring. The City of Oak Harbor devoted $100,000 in ARPA funds to the project, while the Main Street Association raised the remaining funds through donations, fundraising events and grants. The money that was raised will be used for the addition of planters, plants, motion-sensing solar lights and a faux windows mural on the side of a building.

“I think it’s gonna be a really nice addition to downtown,” Livermore said.