 Major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Green Mountain Support Services, empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community, Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include the HOD of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Roosevelt Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx, Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW, this is the Bronx.com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, www.h.com, and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England chapter, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Welcome to this edition of Ableton on Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns and achievements of the differently able. I've always been your host, Lauren Seiler. On this edition, before we get to our guest, Dan Groenberg of Montpelier Relive, we would like to say special thanks to our sponsors, Washington County Mental Health, Green Mountain Support Services, and many, many others. We would like to welcome Dan Groenberg of Montpelier Relive to Ableton on Air. Thanks for having me. Welcome to Ableton on Air. Tell us the missions and goals of Montpelier Relive. Sure. And what you guys do for the city of Montpelier for a month. Great. Montpelier Relive is a community and economic development organization with a mission of making Montpelier a more livable and vibrant community by celebrating our downtown, which is really the heart and soul of Montpelier and what I think makes Montpelier a really special community. We're one of 23 similar organizations across the state in different cities and municipalities. And we work in sort of four areas. One is economic development, specifically focused on supporting our small businesses, especially the downtown businesses. One area is downtown beautification, and that's everything from flowers and benches to public art work. One area is events, and we do a lot of our own events, and we also support other events in the community. And one is sort of promotion and marketing, spreading the word about Montpelier and what's going on to locals and visitors. When you say municipalities, what exactly do you mean by municipalities about that? Yeah. So we're one of the 23 designated downtown organizations. So the state of Vermont has a program called the Downtown Designation Program. And it's communities of a certain size that meet certain criteria. So anyone from Montpelier, Brattleboro, Rutland, Waterbury, Springfields, communities that have sort of a traditional downtown where there's lots of things going on that need supporting. Okay. Well, exactly how does your organization mesh or help the special needs community or how would your organization do that? Yeah. Or what have you done to help the special needs community within your organization? Yeah, absolutely. So I would say that Montpelier Live does work for everyone in the community, everyone who lives here, visits or works here. And so, you know, I can't necessarily point to a specific thing that's been specifically targeted towards, you know, people with disabilities, but I would say that, you know, our events we try and have really accessible and open to everyone. Our public artwork is visible. You know, we worked with the Public Art Commission on the new mural on the side of the Shaw's Building. That's something that makes Montpelier more beautiful for everyone. Having a really vibrant downtown business community is something that's great for everyone. More specifically, we have worked with the Center for Independent Living and hosted a workshop for downtown businesses on how they can improve ADA compliance in their businesses. We've also had an audit of our July 3rd Independence Day event, which is, as you know, one of the biggest events in Montpelier each year. Because it's an event we do with the City of Montpelier, the City's ADA Committee brought in an outside consultant to help review that event, to make sure that everything we do is accessible to everyone. And, you know, there were some small suggestions, like, you know, making sure that food trucks were, you know, if their window was up too high for someone using a wheelchair that, you know, someone in the food truck could come around and help assist people, things like that. But overall, what it found was that our event, like many of our events is really available for everyone. Okay. Now, you mentioned, I know this is a past, and then you can go through some of the other events that you guys have. Explain how the July 3rd event came about and why you guys decided to start that, because it's a huge, you know, a lot of people say, why not July 4th? But go ahead. So at this point, I want to say it was 22 years ago, Beth Hill, who was at the time assistant city manager, I believe, for the city of Montpelier, decided that Montpelier should have fireworks on Independence Day and not wanting to compete with neighboring smaller communities that already had events on the 4th, like Worcester, for example, decided to have the event on the 3rd, so that people could do both. The Warren Parade is another example that's on the 4th that's a local favorite. We want to compete with them. Well, it would be a conflict of interest? No, no, no. Just that people love to go to that event and we wanted people to be able to go to both if they wanted to, so that they didn't have to choose between the two. And it's sort of grown from there over the years. And so now if you come to that event, you'll see fireworks, but also music throughout the day, family events, a parade, a mile road race. We had 35 food trucks this year. It's just sort of a big festival that takes over town. And we had 12,000 people in attendance this year, so it's a really big event. COVID, you know, COVID shut down a lot of things from medical doctors, people having problems with that to outside organizations like Montpelier Alive doing events. How did COVID impact you guys and what, you know, did you guys have anything in its place, online, or something during COVID? How did that work out? Yeah. So, you know, first and foremost, I would say that Montpelier Alive is a community building organization. And the biggest thing that the pandemic impacted was the ability to come together as a community. So that made it really, really challenging and made our job that much more important. So, you know, we did, at the very beginning of the pandemic, we did some sort of fun event things that you could do at home to bring the community together. We had a community sing where we invited everyone to go out on their front porch at their own house and provided, you know, three songs that everyone was going to sing together and enjoy that. And, you know, joined in with, there was a time where people were banging on pots and pans to support essential workers, you know, every night at six o'clock or something like that and promoted that. But, you know, we decided that we weren't going to really pivot to online events because our whole goal is to bring people together sort of in person. Is online or was online events or how can I word this, would it be impossible to do an online event? Certainly not and we supported a lot of other organizations that were doing online events. I think of Scrag Mountain Music as an example, we provided a grant to them to support an event they were doing which was concerts after hours in businesses to bring attention to the business and also provide a fun event for people online. We really as an organization wanted to think of ways that we could, you know, safely bring people together in person where possible. Okay. Talking about accessibility for a minute and accessible venues because a couple weeks back we've had the Montpellier Parks Department on talking about accessibility with parks. How important is accessibility when it comes to doing events either outside or indoors, especially in the City of Montpellier? Because now I know that the city is planning to fix the pavement and they're fixing all the things within the city municipality. How important is accessibility for events within your organization? It's very important. We want everything we do to be accessible to as many people as possible. So most Montpellier live events take place outdoors in venues that happen to be accessible. We do some of our events on the State House lawn. We do some of them literally right on the street in downtown. We do our summer concert series in Christchurch courtyard. All of those venues are easily accessible for everyone. And then when we have events that take place indoors as well at Art Walk, we make sure to indicate where which venues are accessible. Explain, since you said the Art Walk, explain a little bit about that event. So Art Walk is an event that takes place six times a year. So it's every other month on the first Friday of the month. The next one will be the first Friday in October. And you have a Halloween also, right? We do Halloween. Yeah, that's another event. Art Walk is just a fun opportunity to see art by local and regional artists. A variety of venues take place in it. We usually have between 20 and 25 different venues which are both sort of traditional art galleries, but also restaurants and stores that display artwork and people can go around and discover the art, discover the business that they may not be familiar with. So it's just kind of fun casuals, start at whatever venue you want, go in whatever order you want, see as many things as you'd like to see. And that's the first Friday of every other month, like I mentioned. Just a celebration of all the creativity in Montpelier. Tell me a little bit more about the history of Montpelier alive and why you guys really exist. Because, you know, yes there are community organizations, but there has to be more historical behind it. Yeah. So we were originally started in actually the 1990s. And at the time it was the downtown merchants who were really pushing for the creation of the organization to help them band together and be able to do more together. You know, they wanted to promote themselves, they wanted to hold events, but you know, they're very busy running their businesses and didn't have the time to do that necessarily. So it was originally called the Downtown Merchants Association? Yeah. So it's gone by various names at various times, but it was originally sort of the Montpelier Business Association and we grew out of that. It was Montpelier on the move for a time. And then in 1999 it was founded as the Montpelier Downtown Community Association and rebranded as Montpelier Live I believe in 2006. So now in terms of your website how has your and I'm looking at it and it's a wonderful website, how has your website changed especially when it comes to accessibility? Sure. Well, we just launched a brand new website about two months ago working with a firm called Egg Works in Waterbury, so a local firm and the goal of our website is to make all the amazing things about Montpelier that you and I know about from living here available to everyone to help people about the upcoming events, whether that's a concert or a lecture at the library or anything like that to share our outdoor recreation opportunities to share all the great dining that we have and downtown shopping that we have both for people who live in Montpelier who might not be keeping up with everything that's going on, but also for people who are interested in visiting Montpelier. So the new website incorporates all the latest technology and it's really great for people who need to use a screen reader making sure that there's alt text on the photos, things like that that was definitely a focus as we developed the new website. Okay, now I noticed that during the pandemic, and this is a big question, the restaurant industry has taken a huge hit some things closed within Montpelier and then some things opened like there's a new bakery that just opened telling me a little bit more about how the restaurant industry has impacted Montpelier but kind of come together to help at the same time. Yeah, sure. Well, Montpelier is very lucky in that we didn't lose any businesses as a direct result of the pandemic. Some businesses closed early in the pandemic but they were actually planning to close anyway. I'd say Neckie is an example of that. I didn't want to mention names. I'm sorry. No, no, no. But there were some businesses that were in the midst of closing already or for sale already before the pandemic, but the pandemic itself didn't cause any businesses to close and I really credit that with the businesses being really creative. They did more takeout. More takeout. Walk up ordering windows some of them added delivery all sorts of different ways that they pivoted to be more flexible outdoor dining certainly and parklets that the city encouraged more outdoor seating and things like that. What's a parklet for those who don't know? Sure, a parklet is where it's named after a parking spot. So where a business takes over one or two parking spots on the street and turns it into outdoor dining with a sort of outdoor deck essentially. So before the pandemic there were two parklets in Montpelier. There's now I believe eight. So a lot more outdoor dining options available for people. And so you asked about what restaurants can contribute to Montpelier. I think there's... There's obviously a big pandemic or outside the pandemic. Sure. So there's obviously this big legacy from the culinary institute being here but also from just amazing Vermont produce and dairy and all that. There's great food here, right? So we have a really... Especially certain ones like Julio's for example. They do a lot of outdoor dining. Yeah. So I think it's pretty cool that little Montpelier with 8,000 people has 20 some odd restaurants, right? That's pretty impressive. And we have Thai food and Vietnamese food and Mexican food and quite a variety for a small town I would say. So restaurants are really important to our community and food obviously. During the pandemic I think people broadly realize the importance of supporting local businesses, whether that was restaurants or retail stores. This has always been a community that I've heard a lot about our local business. But I think that people took it to the next level. Buying gift cards to businesses to use later when they reopened or getting... Takeout Tuesday was sort of a trend nationally but especially here where people would eat out more often to support local restaurants. So it has been really challenging though in spite of the state grants and federal grants that have really supported. The PPP loans? I'm talking about PPP. I'm talking about the EIDL. I'm talking about the state I can't remember the names that's how long ago it was at this point but the state grant programs that they provided for businesses as well. So the state of Vermont provided money for restaurants to stay open, correct? For all sorts of businesses but I'd say that restaurants were definitely in need at the time because they took biggest hit and that's what our data show locally as well as that restaurant business was down more than any other kind of business. Now, let's talk about some more of the other events that you guys are that you have in the winter, have in the spring. Go ahead. So we do July 3rd. The next big event upcoming is on September 10th which is our Taste of Montpelier Food Festival appropriate to mention now since we were just talking about food and restaurants. That was a new event that we started last year and really in part to help support Montpelier restaurants and also to recognize that we have So is it like a fundraising event? Yeah, let me tell you about it. So there's also to celebrate all the food artisans in and around across Vermont. So it'll be all weekend, we'll have things going on but specifically on the 10th from 1-4 we'll take over State Street between Elm and Maine and have food trucks have Montpelier restaurants providing samples of their dishes we'll have tables from Vermont artisans like Cabot Creamery and Vermont Creamery and Lake Champlain chocolates vendors like that will be providing free samples and there'll also be a lot of fun street performers juggler and yo-yo artists and brass bands and fun things like that. Okay, now let's talk about the well in terms of pandemic now that we're getting more people outside let's talk about the farmers market in Montpelier for a minute. It's it did a fundraiser recently for the food bank or the Montpelier food bank had something to do with that but how does the farmers market help Montpelier or work with Montpelier alive or anything like that? Sure, so the farmers market is a separate organization from us but we work closely together because the farmers market is one of the things that makes Montpelier a great place to live and to visit. The farmers market in Montpelier it's every Saturday from 9 to 1 at the 133 State Street parking lot just west of the State House and a really incredible market for, again we're a pretty small community but we have 60 or 70 vendors at the farmers market every week and Yankee Magazine which is this New England wide well regarded magazine named it one of the best farmers markets in New England I think it's really just a great celebration of Montpelier's Montpelier food and it's also a really fun event as a local to go to because you run into so many people you know and it's a great sort of community It's like everybody knows your name that TV show instead of a bar we have a farmers market pretty much is there anything that we haven't mentioned that's extremely important with your agency? I think just that we're involved in really big breadth of things in Montpelier and we often serve as sort of a connector for people so we'll have you know someone might email me and say I'm working on this project like what do you think and I'll say oh I actually know this other person who's working on something similar you two should get together and talk about this or just bringing the community together in a lot of ways and that's really what we're all about and we're always open for some feedback of how we can serve anyone in Montpelier better where do you see um this might be a far fetched question but where do you see like Montpelier businesses expanding for the especially in these communities especially with accessibility you know do you see that more coming up or you know the question would be possibly to have businesses have more ramps outside their businesses where do you see that going forward yeah well I was excited to host that workshop for the Montpelier businesses with the Center for Independent Living because a lot of businesses saw some like low hanging fruit let's call it some easy things that they could do to make their businesses more accessible you know there's a lot of projects that would require a lot more work you know for example well we have a lot of historic buildings and some of them don't necessarily have accessible entrances and are you know because for example it took forever for the art gallery to get an elevator some time ago yeah and that was an incredibly expensive project that took them several years to raise the money for so that's an example of how it can be difficult in these historic buildings it can be expensive but you know businesses care and are trying to you know be accessible for everyone and will always provide alternative methods of you know if you can't get physically get in the door they're always happy to help you over the phone or something like that as well I will say that I think restaurants outside seating has added more options because all of that outside seating is accessible even in a case where the restaurant inside may not have been so you know I think that you know I don't have any specific examples of upcoming work but I know that it's something that businesses care about and are thinking about talk about some of the future goals of Montpellier because as I understand it you said off air that well we can say it on end that you're leaving Montpellier alive if you'd like to plug that or why are you leaving Montpellier alive obviously for better things but how is that going to impact obviously it's not going to impact at all because you have somebody else but you go ahead if you want to mention it sure yeah so Montpellier live has been here for more than 20 years and like you said it's not going anywhere it's going to get better it may get better without me I've been in Montpellier live for four and a half years and moving on to work for the state to do similar work at a statewide level I'm excited about that but I know the organization will be in good hands under Katie Trouts who's my colleague now who will be interim director we have a really great board who's really involved and engaged in the community and I know we'll keep doing great work and I think the strategic focus is going to be continuing to grow our role as a partner and a collaborator and bringing together all the great work that's happening across Montpellier by many organizations now in terms of your website you have if you want to talk more about that and notice here the Hunger Mountain Co-op has a brown bag concert series we haven't mentioned yeah so our our brown bag summer concert series is Hunger Mountain Co-op's the presenting sponsor and that's a free summer concert series on Thursdays at noon in Christchurch Courtyard there'll be one tomorrow I don't know when this is going to air so to speak but there'll be one well yeah Thursdays probably in two weeks we'll air this sure so through September 6 I believe it's the last date there you can find out more at montpellieralive.com but it's a series of six free concerts by local and regional artists just a fun concert series that we do for people who want to grab a lunch and enjoy being there grab a lunch or bring their lunch bring their lunch exactly okay so last thing I notice here on your website you have a section for one minute oh yeah it's called shop so you list the it says here Montpellier is the best mall town for shopping according to USA Today that's true talk about that so in 2021 USA Today 10 Best which is a USA Today property named Montpellier the best mall town for shopping in the United States and was chosen by judges including journalists from USA Today and then it was a vote to pick the top top one Montpellier has been in the top five for the last five years now so in 2022 we were at number three we fell to number three but I still think for a small town that we have an incredible array of shopping and I think it speaks to you notice here and it's a large print for the visually impaired that you have different categories food and drink, games, gifts so you're listing all the businesses within those categories yeah we have you know such a great variety of businesses and I think the fact that we won this recognition is because our business owners are really wonderful at what they do and you know you get great customer service and it's just a very different experience than walking into Walmart or shopping on Amazon right the Berlin mall does need more stores it's just a different experience a more personalized experience with more unique products and like you mentioned we have everything from clothing stores to you know independent kids toy stores, toys or us doesn't even exist anymore let alone independent stores actually no they are coming back but you know we have two independent you know hobbies, craft stores so quite a variety which is really impressive for a small town well I would like to definitely thank you for joining me on this edition of Ableton on Air for more information on Montpelier Alive and what they do and all the activities especially the website is accessible for people with special needs you can go to www.montpelieralive.com and if you want to find out more about their shops in Montpelier you can go to www.montpelieralive.com forward slash shop so that's forward slash x-h-o-p again the website is accessible for people with visual impairments as well so www.montpelieralive.com forward slash shop and if you want to find out more about Ableton on Air and what we do here for people with special needs and their families and other groups you can go to orca's website at www.orcamedia.net that is www.orcamedia.net this puts an end to this edition of Ableton on Air thank you to all sponsors Washington County Mental Health Green Mountain Support Services and the many partners including Ableton on Air for today's show and also the association for the blind and visually impaired and the division for the blind and visually impaired and so many others thank you again Arlene is not here today I'm Lauren Seiler see you next time for the next edition of Ableton on Air major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Green Mountain Support Services and people with disabilities to live home in the community Washington County Mental Health where hope and support come together media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times Muslim Community Report www this is the Bronx.info Associated Press Media Editors New York Parrot Online U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International Anchor FM and Spotify Partners for Ableton on Air include Yechad of New York and New England where everyone belongs the Orthodox Union the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications Park Chester Times www this is the Bronx.com New York Parrot Online Newspaper Muslim Community Report www.h.com and the Montpelier Bridge Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Boston, New England Chapter and the Society of Professional Journalists