Hoboken ran 15 separate neighborhood activations for the World Cup. Bernards Township did just one. Both reached the same goal of helping small businesses in their towns.
Hoboken Mayor Emily Jabbour and Bernards Township Mayor Ana Duarte McCarthy, speaking last Friday at the Verizon Small Business Super Pitch competition in Hoboken, said the $5 million World Cup Community Initiative, launched by Gov. Mikie Sherrill and developed and funded by the NJEDA, were incredibly impactful.
Jabbour, sworn in this past January, said the initiative matched one of her first moves in office, partnering with the Hoboken Business Alliance — the city’s chamber of commerce equivalent — to build out a series called the Big Match Block Parties: 15 separate activations spread across the city’s neighborhoods, timed to World Cup matches, rather than one large, centralized viewing site.
Jabbour said the grant program, which was administered by Choose New Jersey, enabled the town to better promote one of its best attributes to a larger audience.
“Hoboken has the only fully publicly accessible waterfront in all of northern New Jersey,” she said. “When people come here, we want them to realize, ‘Wow, this is an amazing place to visit.’ We want them to come back here again.”
Jabbour said the localized approach was deliberate, built around the density of the city itself — roughly 60,000 residents in one square mile, a mix of high-rises and brownstones — so that small businesses in every pocket of Hoboken, not just one host site, could capture the visitor traffic.
Jabbour said the $50,000 grant the city received from the state, the result of late change that took money away from a large, centralized event in favor of smaller gatherings, was the difference.
“I think that was a really good change,” she said.
In Central Jersey, Bernards Township took a different route.
A few months ago, FIFA designated the township — which includes Basking Ridge — as a team base camp. Morocco’s national team trained at the local Pingry School; Brazil’s team stayed at the Ridge Hotel.
The township also used a World Cup Initiative grant to stage the “Battle of Basking Ridge” on June 13, the day Morocco and Brazil played each other — a soccer village, cultural fair and watch party built with heavy involvement from local small businesses. https://binje.com/community-and-society/world-cup-soccer/locally-owned-basking-ridge-event-shows-how-communities-can-tap-into-world-cup-economic-boom/
“The Battle of Basking Ridge and having teams Brazil and Morocco in our community brought new customers, visitors and revenue to Bernards Township,” Duarte McCarthy said.
The township also got a moment of civic pageantry out of the arrangement: Verizon Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Gwen Romano joined Duarte McCarthy and other local officials to present Brazil’s delegation with a key to the city.
“Verizon has been a great partner through our overall Cup experience,” she said.
Different tools — block parties in one town, a national team training camp in the other — but the same goal: Using the World Cup to increase traffic in front of local storefronts.
