Perhaps an upcoming effort meant to drive visitors to Carbondale’s Main Street is best explained algebraically: Spend a dollar at X store, get a gift card to Y bar.
Later this month, Carbondale’s Main Street Business Alliance hosts what’s befittingly called the “School’s Out Special,” where downtown shops, restaurants and bars will collaborate in offering reciprocal specials, discounts and bundles. The series, slated for May 24 to 30, includes 26 participating businesses inhabiting the town’s core.
“We are the tour guides of Main Street,” Greg Morrison, owner of Mountain Tide Provision Co. and Alliance member, said of downtown business owners. “We’re trying to get the community out on Main Street and active in all the businesses and, for the Valley as a whole, to come enjoy an amazing town.”
The Main Street Business Alliance itself was founded by Chester White, owner of Sprazzo, an Italian restaurant that occupies the famous early 20th-century Weant House at the corner of 7th and Main streets. White told The Sopris Sun last Friday that the effort was prompted in 2025 after Main Street businesses realized there’s a lot to benefit from collaboration, rather than fighting the same economic battles in isolation.
White then went door-to-door to every neighboring restaurant and retailer, asking, “How can we make this small, five block town more vibrant?” Sure, Carbondale isn’t without its big-ticket events that ancillary businesses thrive on. Hordes of face-painted visitors pour annually into Sopris Park for Mountain Fair, while First Fridays light up the main drag every month.
But what can businesses do during the dreadful lull that is the off-season?
“When everyone’s waiting for the rain to stop and the snow to start, what can we do as business leaders to get people excited about trudging out of their houses, doing something interesting on Main Street and spending their dollars here in town, as opposed to going up to Aspen or going on vacation or buying what they need on Amazon?” White said. “We say feet on the streets, butt in seats.”
Thus, the Main Street Business Alliance was born. And spawned from this alliance is something that White refers to as the “shared prosperity agenda,” where local proprietors and owners use the power of collaboration to spur foot traffic into one another’s brick-and-mortar establishments.
For instance, Morrison said Mountain Tide Provision Co. holds pop-ups at Sprazzo. For the “School’s Out Special” later this month, thirsty patrons can sip Marble Distillery samples and get a chance to win a raffle at Mountain Tide.
“Not every person that comes is going to spend a dollar here, but they might spend a dollar at one of our neighbors and have a good time,” White said. “So much so, that they will come back another time and maybe I’ll get that dollar.”
The Business Alliance has contracted with Downtown Colorado Incorporated, a nonprofit initiative that aims to revitalize downtown cores of small-town Colorado. The active seat in this effort has led to “an active voice” with the Carbondale Board of Trustees, White said.
With the businesses collaborating with each other and with the Carbondale trustees, White hopes to maintain and enhance a healthy “ecosystem of thriving businesses.”
“It’s the contrast between March, when the tumbleweed can blow down Main Street and not hit a person, to that peak summer vibrancy where you hear music, you see people, you smell food, it feels like a little slice of Mardi Gras can exist on our tiny Main Street,” White said, “when, sometimes, there’s deafening silence.”
Participating businesses in the Business Alliance include: Amara, Black Nugget, Bonfire Coffee, Brass Anvil, Carbondale Beer Works, Crow and Key, El Dorado, Izakaya, Kedai, Lulubelle, Main Street Gallery, Main Street Liquor, Marble Distilling, Mountain Tide Provision Co, Nido, Phat Thai, Plosky’s, Rock It! Emporium, Sopris Liquor, Sprazzo, The Tavern, Tiny Pine, Townline Trucks, Village Smithy and White River Books.