Ester Ministry of Community Enterprise

or EMCE. This is a group of business owners that have been getting together this last week in response to the worrying question, "What'll we do to attract business now that the Ester Gold Camp has closed?" Well, after several of the People's Republic's biz owners mulled it over for a bit, Monique Musick of Photosynthesis took the initiative to call a meeting at Hartung Hall last Sunday. We hung out on the porch and brainstormed on several fronts for a while, with a few items being discussed (details in the upcoming May Ester Republic). Among these were:

• the library and the gazebo (more on that in the next post) as points of information for the tourons or others interested in visiting Ester businesses

• a website for Ester businesses (domain reserved by yours truly, site already in preparation, just needs the host to ready the nameserver for it and me to upload the pages)

• forming a sort of Ester "Chamber of Commerce"

• a craft/farmer's market (we settled on the Third Thursday of the month, starting June 19, 4 to 8 pm in the village square)

• a walking map of Ester points of interest and/or commerce

So then we met again last night (I'd forgotten about it until Nancy Burnham reminded me) at the Eagle, and did another bit of brainstorming, coming up with the name above (lots of other names were tried, some completely boring, some completely silly) and a mission statement. Maggie Billington brought a list of points of interest throughout Ester (historical, business, recreational, etc.) Monique will be making a little presentation to the ECA about the EMCE this Sunday (4 o'clock at the hall, folks), and brought some info on forming a nonprofit.

David Stone suggested having an old/antique car day, perhaps at the first Third Thursday market. This is done every year on opening day at the Ester Gold Camp, so the tradition is already established. It'll just be a bit delayed this year, and in the Golden Eagle parking lot instead of the Gold Camp parking lot.