Downtown Santa Rosa businesses host Easter-themed hunt with prizes

Nearly three dozen downtown Santa Rosa businesses have hidden “Easter eggs” in their shops as part of an effort to coax a wave of spring shopping with a little mystery and a bounty of gifts.

Downtown visitors looking to play the game — dubbed the “Egg-Cellent Adventure Easter Egg Hunt” — should be on the lookout for “eggs” in the windows of businesses, collecting 35 stickers from participating shops to fill out a passport. Many of the businesses can be found along Fourth Street, with a handful in surrounding commercial areas, including the Santa Rosa Plaza mall and Railroad Square.

Prizes include a PlayStation 5, a Nintendo Switch, a 70-inch television and a basket with $800 “local gift cards and other fun goodies,” according to the Downtown Action Organization, the nonprofit that runs the Santa Rosa Downtown District, which is organizing the hunt. Downtown property owners created the district in 2018 when they authorized a special assessment to fund programs to clean up and promote the center of Santa Rosa.

In addition to the shoe-leather approach to finding the eggs, players can also look for clues by solving a series of riddles.

Here’s Clue No. 5 (and we’ve solved it for you): “The Easter Bunny has hopped all over the world and stopped by this store. It is Fair to say he has left a clue for you there.”

That clue, coupled with the district’s map of approximate egg locations, leads us to Kindred Fair Trade, which has fronted Fourth Street for nearly two decades.

The global gift shop’s owner, Julie Montgomery, credits longtime customers and online sales with keeping Kindred open. But with revenue still well below normal this past year, Montgomery hopes the confluence of the Easter egg hunt, the end of the rainy season and the relaxation of COVID-19 rules will help people rediscover downtown in a fun, safe way.

“This is the perfect solution, where we are attracting people and families downtown on their own time,” Montgomery said.

The hunt, which began Monday and extends through April 3, coincides with the first days of Sonoma County’s entry into the more permissive red tier for pandemic restrictions — a welcome relief for Santa Rosa businesses after local COVID-19 spread kept the county stuck in the purple tier since August.

“I think this coinciding with the red tier is increasing the excitement level for a lot of our business owners — I’m seeing optimism and much more engagement than usual,” said Cadance Hinkle Allinson, executive director of the Downtown District.

The district credited Bayside Church for the idea behind the Easter egg hunt. Church members collaborated with downtown businesses last summer, building out the parklets that filled Fourth Street when the city closed off the area to cars to create outdoor space for restaurants and shops.

“As we began to think about Easter, and what the church could do during a pandemic to celebrate this holiday with our community, we had several priorities but two jumped to the top of the list: fun for local families and support for local businesses,” Dan Ferguson, a Bayside pastor, said in a statement. “Families with kids and small, locally owned businesses have been some of the hardest hit by the realities of this pandemic. There haven’t been many things to celebrate and there haven’t been many ways to have fun.”

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.