{"id":2549,"date":"2023-02-16T16:09:07","date_gmt":"2023-02-16T16:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/?p=2549"},"modified":"2023-02-16T16:09:07","modified_gmt":"2023-02-16T16:09:07","slug":"downtown-ambassadors-are-the-eyes-and-ears-of-the-street-keeping-frederick-postcard-perfect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/news\/downtown-ambassadors-are-the-eyes-and-ears-of-the-street-keeping-frederick-postcard-perfect\/","title":{"rendered":"Downtown Ambassadors are the \u2018eyes and ears of the street\u2019 keeping Frederick postcard perfect"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Bill Green, The Frederick News-Post
Dwayne Brooks, a greeter with the Downtown Frederick Ambassador Program, hands out maps of the town to area businesses people like Gillian Berluti, manager of Firestone\u2019s Market on North Market Street.<\/p><\/div>\n

Originally posted by Joeseph Peterson, Special to The News-Post<\/a><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s no secret, downtown Frederick has a look and feel straight out of central casting for a Hallmark holiday movie.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The state tourism promoter, Visit Maryland, describes it as \u201ca thriving 50-block historic district for shopping, dining, art, architecture, and entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And it\u2019s one of those charming historic districts that not only attracts visitors from the wider region but hums with the ebb and flow of local daily life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On a typical day, the sidewalks are bustling, the shops are inviting, and the aromas from busy restaurants and bistros entice passersby to come in and satisfy their appetites.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Chances are, if you\u2019re reading this, none of this comes as news to you. But consider this: 50 blocks. That is a large area for a small city to keep up that level of charm week in and week out, year after year. Vibrant downtowns don\u2019t just happen by accident, after all. And while maintaining and operating Frederick\u2019s historic district is the work of many, there is a crack team of just a few workers who are taking on some of the heavy lifting to keep it postcard perfect.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Photo by Bill Green, The Frederick News-Post<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re out here walking the streets, we\u2019re meeting people, we\u2019re greeting them and talking to them, making them feel welcome,\u201d said Dwayne Brooks, a supervisor of that team known as the Downtown Ambassadors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Since late 2021, the Downtown Frederick Partnership has managed the city\u2019s contract with Block by Block, a hospitality service provider in more than 200 cities across the country, to run the Downtown Ambassador Program in Frederick.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What started in 2018 as a downtown safety and services initiative by the city and the Ausherman Family Foundation led to the creation of a committee tasked with investigating the feasibility of an ambassador program here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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DFP executive director Kara Norman, who chaired the committee at the time, said DFP had been hoping to have an ambassador program for years. While a fully staffed cleaning and hospitality program doesn\u2019t come cheap, she said, \u201cIt was that initiative that really got the momentum going to help us get the funding necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now a fully realized team of four in the winter and six in the summer, these ambassadors are tasked with making downtown Frederick cleaner, safer and welcoming from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every Wednesday through Sunday. Brooks\u2019 role centers around hospitality, a broad term for myriad services that require hefty doses of local knowledge, social skills, resource training and a fair amount of tact.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe get a lot of compliments,\u201d Brooks says, noting that several times a day people thank him for what he and his team do. \u201cWe talk to everybody \u2014 visitors, residents that live in the area, the homeless population. We know a lot of them by first name, and they know us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The hospitality team spends most of its time giving directions, fulfilling requests to accompany solo guests to their cars at night, orienting visitors to parking facilities and, in a manner of speaking, making sure folks know where the sidewalk ends when they\u2019ve enjoyed a few too many.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Photo by Bill Green, The Frederick News-Post<\/p><\/div>\n

Luckily, Brooks was on duty when a man in a nice suit, who had evidently knocked back a few too many, started stumbling into the street, trying to remember where he parked his car. The man was able to get assistance not only to get out of the immediate danger of the street but to find a better way home than driving a car in his condition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe don\u2019t know the impact of what could have happened, had Dwayne not happened to meet him and get him on a better path,\u201d Norman said, \u201cso to me, it\u2019s really impactful to think about. … There\u2019ve been great stories,\u201d Norman added, recalling an incident where an older woman, at lunch with her friends, was unable to physically make it back to her car. \u201cThe ambassadors connected with her, got her a chair, got her some water and stayed with her until her friends were able to go get the car and bring it to her.\u201d The ambassador team later received a thank-you note from the woman\u2019s daughter, saying \u201chow appreciative she was that people took such good care of her mother,\u201d Norman recalled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As of September 2022, about a year into the Downtown Frederick Ambassador Program, Block by Block recorded 730 instances where hospitality assistance was fulfilled, including 151 times when a hospitality escort was provided. In that same time period, the cleaning crew ambassadors saw to the removal of biohazard material 549 times, as well as the collection of hundreds of cigarette butts. Well, 602 to be precise \u2014 and Block by Block builds its reputation on being precise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Checking in with businesses in the historic district is another function of hospitality the ambassadors provide. They see whether there\u2019s any way they can support business owners and staff with any public needs, as well as restock the contact cards usually displayed inside the shops that feature information on how to reach an ambassador, should the need arise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe are the eyes and ears of the street,\u201d said Bryan Dixon, Block by Block\u2019s operations manager for the Downtown Frederick Ambassador Program. Per their September 2022 report, the ambassadors made contact with local businesses 486 times, in addition to removing graffiti, stickers and more than 500 bags of trash.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s been great. The business owners love us here,\u201d said Dixon, who previously worked with an ambassador program in Baltimore\u2019s Inner Harbor neighborhood. \u201cThe ambassadors in Frederick are great. They\u2019ve built a great relationship with the business owners and guests before I even got here. I\u2019m just helping to keep it going, keep them motivated.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photo by Bill Green, The Frederick News-Post<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted by Joeseph Peterson, Special to The News-Post It\u2019s no secret, downtown Frederick has a look and feel straight out of central casting for a Hallmark holiday movie. The state tourism promoter, Visit Maryland, describes it as \u201ca thriving 50-block historic district for shopping, dining, art, architecture, and entertainment.\u201d And it\u2019s one of those …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2557,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions\/2557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}