Downtown Lenoir recently won another North Carolina Main Street Award for Best Economic Recovery Initiative, and the owners of Liquid Roots were honored as Downtown’s 2022 Main Street Champions.

The City’s Main Street Department received the 2022 Award of Merit in the Best Economic Recovery Initiative for staff’s “Pivots, Participation, & Patronage (PPP) with Digital Platforms Initiatives” program during the N.C. Main Street Conference held March 14 to 16, 2023, in Statesville.

COVID-19’s shifting mandates and gathering restrictions made creating the 2021 Downtown Lenoir promotions schedule challenging. In response, the Promotions Team and City of Lenoir Main Street staff created its own “PPP” program consisting of the Leprechaun Chase Scavenger Hunt, Haunted Halloween Heist, and Elf on a Shelf in a Store in Lenoir events.

The Leprechaun Chase encouraged local residents and visitors to walk around downtown to discover leprechauns and QR codes in businesses and other points of interest. Players received a set number of points for each pot of gold/leprechaun found and challenge completed. The Haunted Halloween Mystery Heist involved the theft of the iconic Thomas Sayre “Across the Grain” sculpture. Participants played a Clue-like digital board game to solve the heist. For the Elf on the Shelf in a Store in Lenoir game, players collected digital stamps by finding elves and QR codes placed inside participating businesses.

More than 350 teams and 1,000 participants took part in the games, which provided support to downtown businesses. The City of Lenoir Main Street Department has won eight NC. Main Street awards since 2018.