New Larchmont Merchants Association Launches Holiday "Lights on Larchmont"

by Judy Silberstein

( November 19, 2002 ) Seemingly overnight, Larchmont’s retailers have sprung into collective action for the holidays with an ambitious program dubbed “Lights on Larchmont.” From Thanksgiving to Christmas, there will be special shopping events on weekends and Thursday nights, coordinated decorations of lights and garlands, a holiday shuttle service from Palmer to Post, and assorted raffles, coupons, carolers, street food, and other goodies designed to keep shoppers in Larchmont this season. (Click on the poster at right for a complete list of events.)

Lights on Larchmont is the brainchild of Eric Newland, owner of Designer One, the women’s clothing store on Palmer Avenue. “Over the last number of years, I would look out from my store during the middle of the holiday selling season and our downtown would be dark and not cheerful. Even though store owners made individual efforts to make our stores look wonderful, overall it was still very dark.”

To light up the entire business district, Newland and a core group of business owners recently launched the Larchmont Retail Merchants Association. The group’s membership has mushroomed in the past three weeks. Its two founding members, Newland and Carol Charny of Carol E. Charny Vintage, have raised close to $23,000 and brought in close to 100 other business owners.

Most of the members are owners of independent businesses, but Newland has used his prodigious powers of persuasion to cut through corporate red tape and sign up chain stores, like Starbucks and Ann Taylor, that rarely participate in local ventures.

Two other key players are Mario Favo from Lusardi's Restaurant, who is organizing a raffle of dinners-for-two donated by local eateries, and Mark Mafia from Larchmont Taxi, who is underwriting costs for much of the shuttle service.

Support for the Association

The new Association is reaching out to the entire business community in both the Palmer and Post Road sections, and also to Village government and the Larchmont Chamber of Commerce. Chamber President John Merrell of Foley’s Hardware is onboard. The Village Board has opened Village Hall for Association meetings, and Trustees Liz Feld, Marlene Kolbert and Chris Verni have been helping out. (See Board Support.)

“Liz Feld has been one of our greatest allies,” said Newland. “Marlene Kolbert stepped forward to promote using the Senior Bus to shuttle shoppers around the Village,” he added. Marge Piccone, head of the Village Beautification Committee, will be making every effort, with the help of the Department of Public Works, to plant the entire downtown with holiday greenery.

“We’ve been working with the merchants for eighteen years,” said Chairman Piccone. “With Eric’s enthusiasm, they’re making an all out effort this year.” The Beautification Committee has offered use of a dozen planters and will pay for plants out of funds they raise themselves.

“I just think it’s so important that all the different agencies of the Village do whatever we can to support the business district,” said Liz Feld. “What Eric’s group is doing is terrific,” she added, “And we can support them with in-kind services, like getting the DPW to help set up decorations, for example.”

Shuttling Around the Village

“When I heard of the new merchant’s association, and their efforts to make shopping an experience,” said Marlene Kolbert, “I thought it was an appropriate moment to bring up the 2020 Task Force idea for a jitney.” A jitney was one suggestion for tackling Larchmont’s perennial parking problem. Though she is disappointed that logistical and legal issues are precluding use of the Senior Bus, she is delighted to see the merchants going ahead with a shuttle van thanks to a generous offer from Mark Mafia of Larchmont Taxi.

Shoppers will be lured onto the 14-person van with offers of free rides, plus a free canvas tote bag filled with coupons and other promotions good at participating merchants. Current plans call for weekend and Thursday evening service with stops at the train station, at Chatsworth near the Post Office, on the corner of Post Road and Larchmont Avenue, and in the Wendt Avenue parking lot.

Sidewalk Food Fun

The van will allow shoppers to use the free weekend parking on the upper deck of the train station and to move freely from one side of town to the other. A ride on the van will bring them to the main shopping areas, where they should encounter a number of sidewalk food concessions for hot chestnuts, popcorn, hot cocoa, pizza bites, salsa and chips and more. The merchants are busy obtaining the proper permits for setting up special outdoor “food courts.”

With only a few more days until the start of the "official" holiday shopping season, the entire Association is working at warp speed to complete each element of their ambitious undertaking. Shoppers should keep an eye out over the next few weeks as the lights go up, the plants go in, and the shuttle starts rolling around the Village.

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