L.B. Chamber, City Prepare to Revive Christmas-Seasonal Spirit

In the weeks before Christmas last year, Long Beach was steeped in recovery mode following Hurricane Sandy, with more than 60 percent of businesses closed and more than half of residents displaced. Christmas spirit in town was dampened, with commercial district decorations destroyed in the storm or otherwise kept under wraps.

Now, with Black Friday less than 10 days away, about 80 percent of businesses are open, with many new shops and restaurants among them, Mark Tannenbaum, executive director of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, told Patch last week. At the same time, though, as many as 25 percent of residents still reside somewhere outside the city. The chamber, City of Long Beach and West End organizations, among others, are coordinating to revive the Christmas and holidays spirit in town.

“We’re trying to band together to advertise, to run specials and make the town seasonably attractive so that people have a reason to come down here,” Tannenbaum said.

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The chamber is working on advertising a Toys for Tots program in which anyone who donates a toy receives a discount in any participating restaurants or retail stores. Another promotion involves giving free tickets for a skating session at the Long Beach Ice Arena to anyone who spends $75 or more at a local restaurant or retail store.  

“A lot of people don’t realize we have an ice rink,” Tannenbaum said. “People look at this town and think of the boardwalk and beach and that’s it. But we have everything every other town has in the winter, and we probably have the highest concentration of restaurants of any place on Long Island.”

The chamber is also working to bring potted Christmas trees with lights to place outside about every fourth storefront along Park Avenue, and the organization will also hold their annual Hanukkah menorah and Christmas tree lightings at Edwards Boulevard and West Park Avenue the evening of Nov. 30, after the city holds similar lightings at Kennedy Plaza on Nov. 27.  

These measures are part of wider efforts throughout the city to bring holiday cheer to town. Tannenbaum said the city worked with an advertising firm to gain sponsorship to pay for seasonal and nautical lights to line the boardwalk from Magnolia to Long Beach boulevards, as well as to create a new logo just for the season. The boardwalk lighting event is scheduled for Dec. 2. “It’s never been done; it’s never even been talked about,” Tannenbaum said.  

In the West End, West Beech Street will be done up in ornaments the chamber and a neighborhood organization supplied two years ago, including snowflake and green trimming fixtures for poles that line the street.

John Bendo, president of West End Neighbors Civic Association, announced last week the launch of “Miracle on Beech Street,” a fundraising effort to replace seasonal lights destroyed in storage during Sandy. Bendo said that the cost to replace the lights is about $10,000.

“Yes, it is not cheap, especially as so many [residents] are still not home and many are rebuilding,” Bendo wrote in an email to WENCA members. “But every donation helps, whether it is $5 or $500.”

In addition, the City Council’s agenda for the Nov. 19 meeting shows a resolution that reads: “Historic West End Business Association is currently raising funds to purchase new lights for West Beech Street; and … the City Council desires to make a donation matching the funds that are raised, of up to $5,000.” The funds would come from the city’s Long Beach Relief Fund, which holds donations the municipality received in response to Hurricane Sandy.

Tannenbaum said other projects in the works include Santa Claus appearing at a West End store, where he’ll take children’s gift requests and pose for photos with them, and Artists in Partnership, an art organization in town, is planning various seasonal musical events, mainly at the Long Beach Library.

As a way to accommodate visitors to the city during the holidays, the city plans to provide a bus and trolley service, Tannenbaum said. “Let’s say people come to the boardwalk to see the lights and park there, they can pick up a trolley that will be running constantly so that they can go down to the West End or Park Avenue to eat and later get bused back to their car,” he added.

Prior to Sandy, most city merchants more or less gave up on pursuing sales in winter, Tannenbaum believes. “They said: we know we have to do about 75 percent of our business during the summer and we’ll live with it,” he said. “Nobody pulled together to try to reach out of Long Beach to get people to come in.”

In recent years the chamber created a Long Beach-Island Park restaurant week to try to reverse such trends. Those promotions are held in April, before out-of-towners start to arrive in droves in summer, and in October, after they’ve left until next year. The chamber also held two street fairs last summer, which helped attract between 7,000 and 10,000 people to Long Beach, Tannenbaum said.

“I believe that the people in this county love Long Beach and if you let them know there’s things happening they’ll come down and they want to shop here,” Tannenbaum said.