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While summer has barely gotten underway, parents are preparing for the cost of school supplies when children return to the classroom in a few weeks.  The City of Harlan Tourism has hatched a plan to help parents with those expenses provided they shop in downtown Harlan.

Laura Adkisson, Downtown Development Coordinator for Harlan Tourism, shed some light on the plan during a recent interview.

“This fall, we’re encouraging everyone to shop in downtown Harlan for back to school,” Adkisson said. “To encourage that, we are doing a special promotion.”

The promotion will run from July 15, until August 15.

“In celebration of the 2024 school year, for every $24 you spend at a retail shop in downtown Harlan, bring your receipt to the Harlan Center and we will put your name in a drawing to win $224,” Adkisson said. “The more you spend, the more times your name goes into the drawing, and the more chances you’ll have to win the $224 prize.”

According to Adkisson, folks can enter every time they spend $24 in a downtown Harlan retail store.

“If you spend $100, we’ll put your name in there four times,” Adkisson explained. “It’s only limited by how much you spend in our local retail shops. This is not limited specifically to back-to-school purchases, any purchase you make in a retail shop in downtown Harlan will be considered.”

The contest is limited to stores in downtown Harlan and does not include any shops outside of the downtown area.

“We consider everything from KY 38 all the way to Mound Street and from the bypass (US 421) all the way to Harlan Elementary School,” said Adkisson. “Those are the bounds of downtown. In that downtown community, we have lots of boutiques, we have a new boutique focused specifically on baby and children’s clothing, you can get anything from your new blue jeans for school all the way to your band instruments. We just want to encourage people to come and see what’s available in downtown Harlan as they get ready for back to school.”

This is a first of its kind promotion for Harlan.

“This is the first year we’ve tried this,” Adkisson said. “We were just trying to brainstorm a way we could help our downtown businesses capture a lot of the spending that families do in late summer and early fall. We thought this would be a great incentive to encourage people to come downtown and maybe explore some shops they haven’t seen before or chose to spend their money in the shops they already know.”

The drawing for the $224 cash prize will be held on August, 16, at the Harlan Center.

For more information, call the Harlan Center at 606-573-4156.