By Mike Drake
Students from around the globe are enrolled at Peninsula College, yet very few are familiar with downtown Port Angeles.
Richard Stephens, of the Port Angeles Downtown Association, and the Associated Student Council have been working together to find a remedy to this issue.
Students met Stephens at the foot of the Laurel St. Staircase downtown to take part in a scavenger hunt.
Each student was given a grab bag with light snacks and coupons for the local businesses they would be going to.
Two groups of students, led by Brian Tan and Alicia Beck, of the ASC, walked from business to business in an attempt to familiarize themselves with the city they currently reside in.
“Downtown Pirate Daze was an event planned by the Promotions Committee of the Port Angeles Downtown Association, working in close cooperation with Rick Ross and the Associated Student Council and the Foreign Exchange Student Program,” said Stephens. “We [PADA] are very grateful for the support we got from the Administration of Peninsula College and the very real and practical help we got from the Student Council members.”
“The concept of introducing PC students is a goal that has been in discussion at the Port Angeles Downtown Association for the past five years or so,” Stephens said. “We started actively planning for this last year and have worked with Peninsula College Athletic Director Rick Ross and the ASC for the past year lining this up.”
A lot of time and planning went into making Pirate Daze happen. Stephens spoke about the overall success of bringing students from abroad and local businesses together.
“We are very pleased for our first year event. We feel this event will only grow in size and popularity,” said Stephens. “I had several businesses contact me and say what a great time they had interacting with the students, and many students told me how fun it was to visit businesses they had never gone into before, and remarked how warm and welcoming the downtown merchants were.”
Stephens described the objective of bringing Peninsula College students together with local businesses.“Students at P.C. are future customers downtown, they may be future entrepreneurs who open a business downtown — we want to help students become aware of the wide diversity of choices downtown has to offer in terms of shopping, dining and fun things to do and see,” said Stephens. “It is easy to think of downtown as just a ‘retail’ district, but there are great places to sit by the water, read under a tree, places to go work out — inside and outdoors, fun places to go on a date, to shoot pictures, tour art — lots of things to do besides just shop or go to a service provider. That is what Downtown Pirate Daze is about — really opening up students’ eyes to the many dimensions and facets of our downtown and what all there is to see and do.”
Pirate Daze was scheduled to take place on Saturday Oct. 15, but due to severe weather conditions the event was held the following weekend, on Oct. 22. Stephens had expected more than 100 students for the originally scheduled date.
Ross said, “I wish more of our students could have gotten involved, but our teams were all out of town that Saturday. We had 80 athletes from out of town that could not participate.”
Stephens said, “We had probably 40 students for our first year and that was great considering the event got pushed back because of weather and it ended up being on a mid-term weekend. Beck and Tan helped lead students around downtown, and they did a huge amount of legwork in helping to publicize this event and coordinate with local merchants.”
Beck said, “In the future, I hope to see more co-hosted fun events and more students shopping locally because of it. I believe Peninsula College and Port Angeles will do well working together to enhance the students experience here.”
After the scavenger hunt was complete, both groups of students met up at The Landing Mall.
Each student that participated was entered into a raffle drawing for items donated by the local businesses, and were treated to a pizza party.
Stephens said, “All the participating businesses in the Downtown Pirate Daze paid a small buy in fee for the event which funded the printing of coupons for the swag bags and paid the cost of the pizza dinner afterwards.”