City-wide yard sale event planned for Loogootee
May 1—LOOGOOTEE — The city of Loogootee is gearing up for the yard sale of the year. Community Action Leading Loogootee or CALL is set to hold a city-wide event on May 10 and May 11.
CALL event organizer Tracy Brown-Salsman is hoping for a lot of sales those days.
"We are encouraging everyone in Loogootee to put together their own yard sale. Whatever they sell will benefit their own family and it will benefit all of us, because the more people we get here to take part in the yard sale, the more opportunity we will have to show what we have to offer," said Brown-Salsman. "If people would like, they can call me at 812-709-5772 and we will get their yard sale on a map of all of the sales. We will make that map available after May 3 in Loogootee at the Marathon Station."
The community wide yard sale may seem like a simple thing, but it is part of a much bigger idea for promoting Loogootee.
"We want to promote our city. It is a beautiful place. We want people to come take part in the sale and then enjoy our community. The more people we can get here to purchase yard sale items the better everyone will be," said Brown-Salsman, who says the event is being marketed throughout southwestern Indiana. "CALL is our Main Street program. We are working on getting out downtown designated as an historic district. The process is going on pretty well. We are trying to help our community grow and promote what we have to offer here in Martin County."
Early on Brown-Salsman says his list has around 16 participants. He expects the number to grow and that there will be folks having yard sales that are not actively part of the promotion.
"We hope it will help draw people from surrounding areas to Loogootee. We hope they will take a look and consider living in Martin County or Loogootee," he said. "Hopefully, when they come to the yard sales they will eat at our restaurants, buy fuel from our local gas stations and give the economy of the area a little boost."
CALL is a fairly new organization. The downtown group is hoping that the event will help the community become more familiar with its mission to make things better in Loogootee.
"CALL has some longer-term goals than this. We want to see some of our beautiful old buildings revitalized," said Brown-Salsman. "The yard sales help us get the message of CALL out to our community. We want to do more activities in the community and in particular downtown just to promote the community in all the ways we can."
He calls the yard sale event one that people can have fun with, make a little cash, and still promote what Loogootee has to offer.
"We want to invite people to come, have fun, spend the day here. At my table I'll be passing out information on the tourism group so that people have a map of all the beautiful sights we have to see," said Brown-Salsman. "This is an effort to get the word out. Not a lot of people know all of the exciting things there are to see here in Martin County. This yard sale event will help get people in so we can tell them about it."
