By Anne Levin

On January 26, the nonprofit Princeton Business Partnership introduced a new name, new logo, and new website at the first of its monthly “meet-ups.” Some 50 business community members and municipal officials gathered at the Arts Council of Princeton to officially usher in what is now known as Experience Princeton.

On the new website, the organization’s president Aubrey Haines said, “The Experience Princeton brand was developed with many purposes in mind: to welcome visitors from around the world, to uphold Princeton’s reputation for excellence, and to be a responsible, engaged, and forward-thinking ambassador for local business.”

Since Princeton Council passed an ordinance last February creating a Special Improvement District (SID) meant to help revitalize businesses in town, board members and volunteers have been working to develop the brand. A SID is a self-governed and managed nonprofit that constitutes a coalition of businesses and property owners in town, with a goal of helping those businesses. It assists with marketing and acts as a liaison to local government. Each property pays an assessment.

“It’s an interesting time for the organization,” Isaac Kremer, executive director of Experience Princeton, said this week. “We’re in very early phases. Our four teams — streetscape, economic development, administration, and marketing — are meeting regularly and utilizing what we call the strategic doing model, which teaches people how to form collaborations quickly. We prioritize action in the next 30 days, breaking down the work into bite-sized pieces that the teams can really coalesce around.”

“We’re well on our way now,” said Councilwoman Michelle Pirone Lambros, who is the governing body’s liaison to the organization. “We’ve been working on building a directory and calendar of events that will be comprehensive, and inclusive of every business in town. We’ve never had a full directory. This should take it up a notch or two.”

Currently in the planning stages is 2023 Restaurant Week, taking place March 5-11 at eateries around town. As of Tuesday, 21 were signed up to offer special fixed price menus. The upcoming event marks its return since the pandemic. “We’ve had two of them in the past. The second was during the week that we ended up shutting down, so that was really unfortunate,” Lambros said. “It will be good to have it back.”

Kremer said the organization is “in the trenches” to try and get more restaurants to sign on. Volunteers are especially valued with this kind of effort. “When you have 68 restaurants in the district, that’s a huge job,” he said. “We need people with good connections to help our outreach and encourage the restaurants to participate, just getting them to say yes.”

Meet-ups are the last Thursday of the month, at 4 p.m. The next one will be at a location to be announced. “The goal is to move them throughout the district,” said Kremer, “so they won’t all be held in the same area.”

Visit experienceprinceton.org for more information.