Highway 4 through Clinton was closed on Saturday for the grand opening of eleven new store fronts in the downtown. Seven of them were winners in the Win This Space contest and four more decided Clinton was where they wanted to do business.
Community Improvement Coordinator Angela Smith says the celebration was combined with the annual Harvest Festival so they had the children's festival which was well attended even in the rain, wagon rides, the car show, the motorcycle show and a vendor market.
Smith says Clinton took the Win This Space competition to another level with seven winners instead of the usual one, but points out they wouldn't even have had a contest had it not been for Huron East Economic Development Officer bringing the event to Huron County. Smith says “She (Jan Hawley) coached us through it and we wouldn't even have known if it wasn't for Jan, so Huron East should be very proud and we're proud to be right next door to her and be learning from her. We did make one small change to the program that sort of exploded in a terrific way for us.”
One of those winners is Jackie Dickson, who owns Journey of the Soul. Dickson says her goal is to help connect people in the community alternative forms of healing, but she points out they are not trying to compete with traditional forms of health care. They want to work with traditional health care.
Dickson explains there are four aspects of health ... mental health, emotional health, physical health and spiritual health. She says all four of those pieces have to be in balance and addressed in order to fully heal the body.
Sandy Campbell was not a contestant in the Win This Space contest, but did want to open up her store in Clinton. Campbell owns Huron Christmas Store.
Campbell describes herself as a total Christmas freak says she really wanted to make this store unique and kind of different. She says she can't compete against the big box stores, so she wanted to carry things that were really unique, hand made, small trees made for small places, things that people can't get anywhere else. So she really wanted to take it from the ground up and just do something very unique and different.
All of the new stores attracted a lot of attention throughout the day, despite that fact that even when it wasn't raining, it was cloudy and the sun only flirted briefly with making appearance.
"Journeys of the Soul" was one of the stores to open on Saturday (Photo by Bob Montgomery)
Jackie Dickson, owner of 'Journeys of the Soul" (Photo by Bob Montgomery)
Sandy Campbell, owner of the Huron Christmas Store (Photo by Adam Bell)
