Don the top hats and tails, swish through the streets in long flowing high-necked Victorian dresses and let the children cavort excitedly with visions of sugar plums in their anticipating eyes.

 

Mix and mingle and purchase superb items from the vast array of vendors along the way, join in singing the traditional carols as costumed revelers stroll along the route, sip a bit of hot cider at various locations and while Charles Dickens might not have put it this way, we will: Pass A Good Time!

 

This is all to say that your Old Mandeville Business Association is already deep into planning the annual Christmas Past Festival in homage to the English Victorian era of Dickens, one of the great writers of all time and perhaps best know for his classic, A Christmas Carol.

 

This year Christmas Past will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Dec. 13, mainly focused on Girod and Lafitte streets in the heart of the commercial center of Old Mandeville.

 

Your OMBA workers who are volunteering to stage this huge event all share my commitment: that we will this year line Girod Street from near the Trailhead to Lakeshore Drive with arts and crafts vendors and their booths and tents. We have resolved our insurance problems that threw a monkey wrench into our plans last year and prevented us from bringing the vendors to the street.

 

Again, this year the OMBA event will flow into the city’s annual Winter on the Water Festival that will begin with the Christmas parade around 4 p.m. starting on Lakeshore Drive at the yacht club and include the traditional lighting of the lakefront oaks, a decorated boat parade and caroling from the public gazebo.

 

OMBA officers and board members Richard Boyd and Leah Edmunds are serving as overall co-chairpersons for the festival this year and they are having early organizational meetings and establishing committees to help in the myriad details necessary to put on a huge street festival. I know some of you have already signed up to volunteer and anyone who wants to help and has not indicated so, please contact me.

 

 

As many of you who attended our very successful bi-monthly social/networking meeting on June 15 at the Beach House already know, your OMBA has thrown its full support behind a move at City Hall to create the position of a full-time economic/cultural affairs director for our city.

 

The need for such a position dominated much of the program during the social and that was coupled by a successful petition drive organized by OMBA officer Richard Boyd and efforts by Kerri Blache and others, all backing a resolution formulated by Council President Trilby Lenfant to do just what we envisioned.

 

Our effort drew the full support of the Mandeville on the Lake Civic Association, the newly created Old Mandeville Historic Association and many citizens who share our vision of having such a full-time city employee skilled in helping us lure more unique cottage businesses to the B-3 zone in Old Mandeville, while carefully protecting and preserving the unique cultural and architectural legacy of much of Old Mandeville.

 

And the joyous news: On June 25 all five members of the City Council voted in favor of the resolution by Lenfant to include an amount in the upcoming budget to pay the salary of a full time economic director.

 

The council will go into budget hearings later this month, and in August if necessary, to adopt a fiscal 2009-2010 budget at its final August meeting which will become effective at midnight Sept. 1. We are urging the city to as soon as possible begin advertising for this position, interview applicants, make a choice, and hopefully have the new employee on the job on or about Jan. 1, 2010.

 

While we recognize this as a full-time city position and the director will be responsible to the entire city, your OMBA also looks forward to a long, productive working relationship with the new director as we, hand-in-hand, find the tools to convert the commercial sector into the fully realized waterfront commercial boutique shopping area we all envision, thriving robustly economically.

 

Your OMBA gives a huge thanks to past OMBA officers Tess and Rick Dennie and Kerri Blache for their trailblazing work that set the stage for a city administration now fully behind the concept. We commend Mayor Eddie Price for grasping and supporting our OMBA vision in creation of this vitally needed position.

 

 Exciting times are ahead!

 

 

Work is well underway toward creation of the OMBA brochure, the first full overhaul of the important promotional document for Old Mandeville since 2007.

 

OMBA member Abby Miller, with whom we have contracted, is producing beautiful photographs, OMBA officer Richard Boyd has drawn a complete draft of the document, Officer Carol Self and Administrator Julie Egle have poured over the membership roster making sure all information on every member is 100 percent accurate before it will go into the brochure. Our good friends and members at BJ’s Quick Print are putting it together.

 

It is going to be a sensational looking document and we know members of your OMBA will be pleased with the results. Look for the finished brochure soon.

 

 

Your OMBA heartily congratulates Geoff Hingle and his staff at PMO Link in the old Justine Plantation home at the foot of Girod Street for being profiled on the cover and inside in the July issue of the CityBusiness North Shore Report magazine.

 

Hingle, CEO of the business management company, is on the cover of the magazine. PMO Link is a member of your OMBA and we on the OMBA board also thank him and others at the company for inviting us recently to a splendid grand opening of the newest of Old Mandeville businesses.