Downtown Annapolis is the perfect destination to kick off Small Business Saturday. Most of the businesses, including about 90 retailers and 80 restaurants, are locally owned small businesses. Shopping downtown on the Saturday after Thanksgiving at small businesses has become an annual tradition where communities kick off the holiday season in stores still offering a full-service customer experience. This year Small Business Saturday is on Saturday, November 25th.
It has been over 12 years since downtown Annapolis started celebrating small local businesses on this day. They encourage shopping at your favorite small business on this day to bring the community together for a traditional shopping and dining experience where full customer service is still an option and stores are decorating for the holiday season.
Several new businesses have opened downtown this past year including Finart on West Street, Silk Road Antiques on Maryland Avenue, Annapolis Crystals and Annapolis Reclaimed on Main Street, The Goat on Randall Street, and Party Dress on Fleet Street. “The downtown Annapolis commercial district is a vibrant shopping destination,” says Erik Evans Executive Director of the Annapolis Arts District and the Downtown Annapolis Partnership. The downtown Annapolis area is filled with great local businesses and the Downtown Annapolis Partnership Ambassadors are on the street every weekend during the holidays to answer questions and direct you to all quadrants of the downtown area.
To continue the shop local theme in downtown Annapolis, the next day, Sunday, November 26th is Artist Sunday where the Annapolis Arts District is encouraging locals to shop local contacting their favorite local musician to buy a CD, purchase tickets to local performing arts events, and for everyone to shop local art galleries, art studios and bookstores. Everyone also heads back to downtown Annapolis on the first three Thursday evenings in December to shop and dine during the Midnight Madness shopping events on Dec 7, 14, and 21 and the Annapolis Holiday Market from December 7 to 10.
The City of Annapolis also starts its free holiday 2-hour on-street parking on commercial streets during the Thanksgiving weekend when you use the promo code ParkDTA in your Parkmoble App. For this year you can also get your first hour of parking for free in the new Hillman Parking Garage when you use the ParkDTA promo code in the Parkmoble App. Additional free parking is available evenings and weekends at the Calvert Street Parking Garage located at 19 St. Johns Street and free parking on Sundays is available until 4 pm at the Whitmore Parking Garage at 25 Clay Street. Many businesses in downtown Annapolis participate in Park Shop and Dine which gives you 2 hours of free parking in city-owned parking garages when making a purchase.
For more information on Small Business Saturday in Annapolis, and the Annapolis Holiday Market visit www.downtownannapolispartnership.org
