Specifications include, but are not limited to: Portland Business Alliance (PBA) has a long standing relationship with the City and is the established leader in private sector promotion of the downtown core business area. PBA has developed strong relationships with downtown businesses through years of successful seasonal promotional campaigns including those focused on the holiday shopping season. PBA is currently the only entity with the capacity and developed relationships to provide this type of successful promotion. This campaign benefits the City through significant increased patronage of downtown for shopping, entertainment, and hospitality purposes. Bringing more people downtown for these purposes supports businesses and directly benefits the City financially through payment of business taxes, lodging taxes and parking fees both on- street and City garages. The health of the downtown business and shopping environment is critically important to maintaining the City's reputation for residents, employers and visitors and has been challenged severely by COVID-19 closures and the reduction in office workers. The prompt execution of a contract from this request is necessary to allow sufficient time for PBA to develop promotional materials and enter into the necessary sub-contracts, with additional but more narrowly focused groups, to assure prompt and appropriate deployment of the campaign during the winter of 2021-22.
