Batavia to highlight local businesses in new video series

The city of Batavia will produce a series of videos highlighting 40 local small businesses.

The video series, which will help promote Small Business Saturday in November, was approved by the City Council during its July 18 meeting.

“What we’re looking to do is basically have the city, Main Street and Chamber conduct a ‘Batavia Small Business Saturday’ video series for this year,” said Anthony Isom, assistant city administrator. “This would require the production to create about a 15- to 30-second video for up to 40 of our small businesses in Batavia.”

Isom said that each of the videos will feature an interview with a representative from the business, accompanied by clips of the business itself.

“These videos will premier in the weeks leading up to Small Business Saturday in November of this year,” he said. “This will offer an opportunity to promote early, so that we can ensure a greater turnout of people will come out to support the businesses.”

City Administrator Laura Newman said that the businesses would be free to use the videos for their own purposes. It was not clear Monday which specific businesses will be featured in the video series.

“This is sort of a replica of a program we did for Restaurant Madness, which was really successful,” she said. “We learned some things about how to promote it even more if the individuals were able to utilize that in the future.”

Isom said the cost of the video series will not exceed $10,000.

Funds for the project likely will be taken from the remaining Economic Development Grant, Newman said.

Alderman Mark Uher said the city should make sure to track how much of an impact the videos have on promoting Batavia businesses.

“I would like to see that if the businesses are using it, somehow we can continue to track videos across whatever platform they’re put on so that we can see, ‘Are we actually making a difference,’” he said. “What changes are we doing and are they spreading or getting more views.”

According to meeting documents, the city will be assisted by Both/And Pictures, a Batavia-based video production company.

“Our small businesses have a critical role in being involved directly with our consumers, building relationships with our intergovernmental bodies [and] they’re oftentimes more involved in our community in a more intimate way,” Isom said.

In other business at the meeting, the council approved a final plat for the subdivision at 950 W. Wilson St.

According to meeting documents, the 0.98-acre property would be divided into a 0.47-acre lot and a 0.51-acre lot, with no development proposed on the latter.

Conditions for the approval include a 12-foot utility and drainage easement on the western side of the property, as well as the removal of building setback lines, according to meeting documents.

JKLM Land Development is the applicant for the project.