Free housecleaning, digital gadgets up for grabs
Gilroy – Don’t feel like cleaning your house for a year? Want a new iPod but can’t afford it?
Stop by downtown businesses in the next two months and you could win free house-cleaning services, the hottest digital music gizmo on the market, $500 in pizza gift certificates and $250 in cold hard cash.
Downtown shoppers will have a chance to win those prizes in a May raffle. In the meantime, they can ask merchants for free instant-win cards that include thousands of discount certificates, prizes and cash. In total, downtown merchants are giving away more than $5,000 in cash and prizes.
The giveaways are part of “The Road to Easy Street” campaign, one of the city’s promotional efforts to buoy downtown businesses during a year of major street repairs. Half of Monterey Street along a two-block stretch in the city’s historic core has already been closed as PG&E workers install new gas lines. When they are finished in March, the city will close the other half of the road to tear up the street and sidewalks and install new lamp-posts, trees and other improvements.
Mike Jones’s business, Cleaning Services, lies north of the construction area. But he donated a year of monthly cleaning services to help fellow businesses during what promises to be a difficult year.
“I really feel for those downtown businesses right now,” Jones said.
The grand prize raffle drawing will take place at 6pm on May 12 at Happy Dog Pizza Company, on Fifth Street. Participating downtown businesses will offer the instant-win cards from March 1– May 7.
The promotional campaign is being sponsored by the City of Gilroy and the Gilroy Dispatch.
Following the “The Road to Easy Street,” downtown merchants will host a citywide art contest that features paintings, photographs and other work in storefront windows.
To learn more, visit www.downtowngilroy.com.
