July 3, 2007

David Corliss, City Manager

City Hall

P. O. Box 708

Lawrence, KS 66044

Re: 2007 2nd Quarter DLI Report

Dear David:

We have been busy over the past quarter promoting Downtown Lawrence and staging new community events. I have listed a few of the details.

Community Events

Our inaugural Downtown Lawrence Film Noir Festival began June 7 and was a huge success. We had over 250 people in attendance and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time. We have received dozens of positive comments about the event and are looking forward to its continuation throughout the summer. We had great cooperation with Duane Peterson from Parks and Recreation along with strong financial and promotional support from Downtown businesses. The local news media did a wonderful job of covering the event, both prior to after the first screening. We are proud to be able to show how DLI, City departments, private business, and downtown landowners can work together to provide community events. We also provided sponsorship materials for the HUD Conference held in Lawrence and hosted by Neighborhood Resources.

Downtown Lawrence Business Plan

Our planning committee has continued to work on topics that are vital to the long-term success of Downtown Lawrence. Committee members have met with representatives from the Library as we try to determine the best course of action for this vital facility. We will meet with this group and members of the City Commission for a study session in August to focus our efforts. We have also begun to cultivate discussion among the businesses regarding the NRA plan proposed by the City. Our director, Rick Marquez, served on the CCH and assisted with the formulation of the vision statement for homeless services. He also met with representatives from the East Lawrence Neighborhood Association and Lawrence Community Shelter to discuss cooperation between our organizations. He suggested LCS perform community service in Downtown just as they currently do in the Oread Neighborhood and LCS has agreed to do some clean-up of the sidewalks at different times. Finally, we will be contacting the appropriate City staff to work on a plan to improve parking signage.

Downtown Marketing

Our direct mail piece seems to have been quite successful with participating businesses reporting that coupon redemption has been strong. We also noticed increase traffic on our website and increased requests for Downtown maps immediately after the mailing, which included information on our website. We also inserted 10,000 copies of the Downtown map in the Salina Journal in early June and have had quite a few contacts with Salina residents since that time. We have continued with local newspaper and television programs and will gauge success from those through contact with Downtown business owners. Events such as the Film Noir Festival have also served to promote and market Downtown as a community destination. We will continue with this marketing plan; mass media advertising, directed marketing, and community events. We have also begun design of the new Downtown Lawrence Map and Visitor Guide with a goal of having this completed by the end of the third quarter. The current map has been very successful with just under 40,000 being distributed since December 2006. All of these marketing programs have been funded in part through participation with Downtown businesses.

New Director Hired

We have hired a new director, Jane Pennington, who will start on July 23. Jane will replace Rick Marquez who will be leaving to pursue other opportunities. We are very excited to have Jane come on board and look forward to capitalizing on her experience with cultural events and fundraising. We will continue with all of our plans for 2007 and hopefully add a few new ideas.

I have attached our current financial statement for your review.

Sincerely,

Chris Burger

President

Board of Directors

Downtown Lawrence, Inc.

cc: Debbie Van Saun

Downtown Lawrence, Inc. 900 Massachusetts Street, Suite 100 PO Box 335 Lawrence, KS 66044

785-842-3883 FAX 785-838-9781