Unlock the secrets of Hanford's vibrant transformation with a first-hand look at our downtown revitalization efforts and community events that make our town pulse with excitement. As the City Council explores fresh traffic designs and we toast to the promotions of new police lieutenants, we also spotlight Hanford's medical facility growth in the Costco shopping center and the new Town Place Suites Hotel on Lacey Blvd.
Main Street Hanford's Michelle Brown dishes out details on the Everybody's Irish in Downtown Hanford event, marrying craft beer bliss with the rhythm of live tunes.
Feel the warmth of community spirit as Janet Marie from the Rocks of Love Kindness Project shares the joyous initiative that turned Hanford's Winter Wonderland into a treasure-seeking adventure, with hand-painted rocks and swag bags hiding in plain sight.
Then, lace up your sneakers as we salute Amy Bush's tenure and follow the adrenaline rush of Hanford's high school sports scene with Eric Bentley.
You can find the Hanford Insider at www.hanfordinsider.com and on social media at @hanfordinsider Thank you for supporting the show!
Unlock the secrets of Hanford's vibrant transformation with a first-hand look at our downtown revitalization efforts and community events that make our town pulse with excitement. As the City Council explores fresh traffic designs and we toast to the promotions of new police lieutenants, we also spotlight Hanford's medical facility growth in the Costco shopping center and the new Town Place Suites Hotel on Lacey Blvd.
Main Street Hanford's Michelle Brown dishes out details on the Everybody's Irish in Downtown Hanford event, marrying craft beer bliss with the rhythm of live tunes.
Feel the warmth of community spirit as Janet Marie from the Rocks of Love Kindness Project shares the joyous initiative that turned Hanford's Winter Wonderland into a treasure-seeking adventure, with hand-painted rocks and swag bags hiding in plain sight.
Then, lace up your sneakers as we salute Amy Bush's tenure and follow the adrenaline rush of Hanford's high school sports scene with Eric Bentley.
You can find the Hanford Insider at www.hanfordinsider.com and on social media at @hanfordinsider Thank you for supporting the show!
Speaker 1:
On this episode of the Hanford Insider. We'll hear from Janet Marie from the Rocks of Love Kindness Project and Michelle Brown of Main Street Hanford about their upcoming events. Rob will give us a quick City Council update and a checkup on the community calendar and I'll be back to update you on all of the high school sports. This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, march 11th.
Speaker 2:
Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Hanford Insider. I'm your host, rob Bentley. Thanks for listening. In community news this week, the Hanford City Council met last Tuesday. The focus during the study session was the downtown improvement project. Since 2015,. The city has been looking at ways to create a plan that would hopefully make downtown Hanford a destination. Interwest was hired to develop a plan using the American Rescue Plan Act grants. The proposal looks really nice. The main concern is expanding parking space and providing a more pedestrian friendly concourse. Next is recommending a roundabout or a four-way stop at the intersection of Seventh and Doughty. The City Council will be deciding on which plan they would prefer to see in the design phase at their March 19th meeting. I would encourage everyone to go back and watch the video stream of the study session so that you can be informed about the choices and ramifications. During the regular meeting, the Council recognized new police lieutenants Justin Vallin and Jason Gustin. Congratulations, guys. Also in community news this week, the City of Hanford will be reviewing site plans for several projects, including a new 11,000 square foot medical facility on the property just east of Costco. While Medical Center isn't the shopping experience we had hoped for, go back and listen to the August 27th episode of the Hanford Insider to hear Brian Johnson talk about how, in the end, this type of growth will actually attract more retailers to the area. The City will also be looking at plans for a new Town Place Suites Hotel by Marriott, which will be located on Lacey Boulevard on the vacant lot behind Food's Co, across from Planet Fitness. Here's some things coming up on our community calendar.
Speaker 2:
The Hanford Ball Spring Carnival is open through the month of March. It's open on weekdays from 5 to 10 and on the weekends 2 to 10. The Kings Players are presenting Ken Ludwig's leading ladies at the Temple Theater in Hanford. The show wraps up this weekend. For tickets and information, visit kingsplayersorg. Hoffman's Nursery is hosting a vegetable garden seminar on Saturday, march 16th at 10am. The Kings Storybook Garden Museum is holding their annual Victorian Tea Fundraiser at the Kings Fairgrounds on Saturday, march 16th, the children's storybook gardenorg. For information and tickets. The Kings Symphony Orchestra will be holding their spring concert Sunday, march 17th at 4pm in the Hanford Fox Theater. Tickets are $15 and available at the door.
Speaker 2:
The Carnegie Museum of Kings County will open their latest exhibition, kings County's Asian Experiences, on Friday, march 22nd. This is going to be a year long show in two parts. You're not going to want to miss this event. For more information you can visit Carnegie Museum of Kings Countyorg. The Hanford Sunset Rotary Club will be having their great stakeout fundraiser at the Hanford fraternal hall on March 23rd. Dissolves Faso Flowers is holding a spring outdoor pop-up show on March 24th from 11 to 4th at their shop at 603 East Rangeville Boulevard. There will be lots of handmade items created by those in the community. You'll want to be sure to mark your calendars now for the Hanford fraternal hall's second annual spring classic car show on Saturday, march 30th, the Hanford West High School Band-Baker's Cars on Campus car show on April 27th and the third annual Carnegie Museum of Kings County Downtown Hanford car show will be held on June 8th. Registration is now live at CarnegieCarshowcom.
Speaker 2:
I'll be grabbing events as I see them on the Hanford Sentinel Calendar and social media pages. If you have an event coming up and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together. Send your information to HanfordInsider at gmailcom. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete calendar of events. As I was reading off the calendar of events for March, I got really excited about all the events coming up. It's great, with the weather warming up now that we can get outside and enjoy all that Hanford has to offer. One of my favorite events each year is the Everybody's Irish in Downtown Hanford put on by Main Street Hanford each year. This year, the event will be held on Friday, march 15th, from 6 to 9 pm. Michelle Brown joins me now to tell us how the event is shaping up. Welcome to the show, michelle. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:
Be safe and happy.
Speaker 2:
Hey Michelle. I know that you and your staff have been super busy preparing for Friday night. What can people look forward to at this year's event?
Speaker 3:
Yes, we have been very busy, but we're so excited. We love this event well, everybody's. We encourage you to get dressed up, wear your favorite green and Fun same caddy's day attire. We have 22 tasting locations, so that's 22 different types of craft beer Seltzers, ciders, and even we have a shandy this time, so that's exciting. We have quality beers that we carefully pick with Lindsay, the owner of blush fine wines, and also sent some IPA's from Wayno beverage company. So we're we thoughtfully pick these to give you a variety of different flavors and some unique, some unique things, some Irish inspired beers. Plus, businesses are going all out with decorations and photo ops, some businesses will have small bites, some businesses are going all out with tacos and Many businesses will have live music as well. So this isn't an entire experience and it's definitely meant for you to come, for all of our guests to come and Celebrate downtown Annapurna. Enjoy San Patrick's Day.
Speaker 2:
For sure, love it, absolutely love it. So during these events you have people walking downtown and maybe discovering new stores. Why are these events so important to Main Street Hanford and their mission to service the merchants downtown?
Speaker 3:
Well, these events are important to us in many ways they're. One of the reasons we do this is we we truly want to create an Experience for people when they come to downtown Hanford. We want them to create memories here. We want them to think of downtown Hanford as a as a place for activity and fun Fun with friends, fun with family. So we're really trying to improve the quality of life for the people who live in Hanford, who are working in Hanford and who visit Hanford. Also, we do this because we want to create exposure for downtown businesses. Part of our mission is supporting them, and one way we can do that is by driving foot traffic directly into their business.
Speaker 3:
So businesses pay a small fee to participate. It's only a hundred and twenty five dollars, but they receive probably about, I would say, four or five hundred dollars worth of beer to serve to their visitors. They receive a permit to do that, so, and then they get hundreds of people inside of their business. So, for a small fee, much smaller than what they can pay for online advertising or print advertising, they have people inside their door and they're able to provide an experience for them. So we're so happy that we get to do that for them and it's it's always so much fun, and I've said this many times. One of the most common things I hear as I'm walking around and just listening to the guests is they're like wow, I didn't even know this place existed. So it's definitely about gaining exposure to our businesses.
Speaker 2:
Certainly I can speak for the Carnegie Museum of King's County. I think last year we had over 300 people that came through the museum and they stayed around and looked at the exhibits and everything. This year we don't have an exhibit quite ready it's about a week after the event but we're looking forward to opening the door so people can see the new floors. Yes, that it didn't been restored. It's beautiful, so that's so great. If someone doesn't have their ticket for it, is it sold out? Can people still get tickets? How do they get them?
Speaker 3:
Yes, tickets are still available. They're $45 and the event is Friday, march 15th. They are available on our website at Main Street, hanford comm, as well as here in our office at 219 West Lacey.
Speaker 2:
You know, thursday night marketplaces around the corner and I'm gonna. I talked to Jim the other night and we're gonna have him on the show in April to kind of preview some of the entertainment. We won't spill. We won't spill all the secrets just yet, but I know it's your. Your staff is very excited about that coming up in May. I.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, we've already been working on getting the bands booked. We have tons of new vendors applying. We figured out a way to have some new additional food vendors into the park. The Thursday Night Marketplace is such an interesting event. There's so much that goes behind the planning and the reasons why we do the things we do. We get so many suggestions and so many comments online that why don't you do this and why don't you do that? When we literally think of everything and there's no stone unturned with this event. We are excited that we finally figured out a way to have a few more food trucks in the park. It's hard to get. There's lots of rules of how the trucks can get in and where they're allowed to park and not allowed to park, but we've kind of figured out some ways, so we're excited.
Speaker 2:
Well, michelle, thank you for joining us today. We're looking forward to Friday Night's event and everything that Main Street Hanford does.
Speaker 3:
Thank you, Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:
Well, it's great to have on the show with me Janet Marie, who runs the Rocks of Love and Kindness Project on Facebook. How are you doing, janet? I'm doing great. How are you, rob? I'm doing great. Hey, janet. So this Rocks of Love project is quite an undertaking and I'm sure it's a work of love for you. How did you get started and what gave you the idea to get started?
Speaker 4:
I love the idea of giving back and creating kindness and I found a group about 13 years ago on Facebook out of Bicelia that inspired me to start painting rocks and hiding them or placing for others to find, just to create a little smile. And so I decided to go ahead and start my own group and it just kind of led to instead of only painting rocks, we wanted to do community works, projects, get children involved and just create a positive environment for our community. So what I have coming up is on the 29th we as a group, collaboratively, would like to go to Valley Christian Home and they have 66 residents and what we would like to do is to spread a little Easter love and create some smiles. So we would like to take some painted rocks, maybe small crocheted items, little handmade cards, you know, colored drawings from kids, bunny cutouts, anything that would just create a smile. Or a senior citizen, a living, non-adible item. We can't do that. But yeah, that's what we want to do just spread some love and make everybody happy.
Speaker 2:
So you're going to need some rocks and possibly materials. If someone was interested in getting a hold of you and getting involved in this project, how can they help and how can they get a hold of you?
Speaker 4:
Anybody can find me on Facebook under Rocks of Love in the Kindness Project If somebody wants to get involved. I would love to have as many people as involved as possible because I mean, the more love you can spread, the better the world is right.
Speaker 2:
So this isn't your first project. I know that at the Hanford Winter Wonderland you had some discovery people would go around and find these rocks. How did that go?
Speaker 4:
That was like my inspiration, just really like dive in and go for it. So every weekend, throughout the time when Winter Wonderland opened until they closed, I did 200 swag bags where it would have a hand-painted ornament or a hand-painted rock and then like some rings and stickers and different little things, you know, and I would take them out to Wonderland and I would hide them. Of course I was caught for many a times, but I would hide them just for people to find it and then on the back of the rock or in the bag there would be a piece of paper explaining what it is, where it came from and the whole reason behind the project. So a lot of people would find their rock and they would take a picture and they would place it on our Facebook page with their smiling face, which was like that's the payoff.
Speaker 4:
you know, that's the thing, and it was really cool because a couple of the vendors approached me and asked me if I would paint a rock for them. And I'm like sure, no problem.
Speaker 2:
That's cool.
Speaker 4:
So I would paint the rock, give it to the vendor. The vendor would then go and hide it and the rock would be. It would say on the rock what it was for, you know, a free, say, a free corn dog or a free kettle corn. So when somebody would find that rock they would take it to the vendor and turn it in and get their free item. And that process just kept repeating throughout the whole winter Wonderland time. So it was absolutely a blast. That's great, yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 2:
Well, that's so great that you do that, janet. Thank you so much for joining us and, once again, the Facebook page is called Rocks of Love and the Kindness Project and they have their special project coming up for the folks at the Valley Christian Home here in Hanford and if you would like to get involved, please visit their Facebook page and you can hook up with Janet and get signed up and see how you can contribute to their project. Thanks again, janet, for joining me.
Speaker 4:
Thanks, Rob. Have a great day. And now it's time for Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Bentley.
Speaker 1:
We started with some offseason basketball news, as Amy Bush has stepped down as head coach of the Sierra Pacific girls basketball team. In her tenure, she led the Golden Bears to numerous league and regional titles, plus a state title in 2018. In her statement, she said she wishes Sierra Pacific well and looks forward to watching the continued success of the program and, of course, we, which coach Bush the best in her future endeavors as well.
Speaker 1:
In baseball action, hanford High had a busy week as they played four times. The bullpups went two and two in those games, taking down Justin Garza seven to two and Clovis West three to one. The two losses came at the hands of LD Amante and Kingsburg, that Kingsburg loss coming in extra innings. Hanford West split their contests, falling to Madera eight to one and then bouncing back in a big way with an 11 to one win over to LaRua Union. Sierra Pacific also split their games, with a loss to Sanger, but a five to three win over San Joaquin Memorial.
Speaker 1:
As for softball, after being shut out by Wasco 9-0, hanford High was able to pick up a pair of close victories, as the bullpups took down Kerman 11-7 and Fowler 8-6. Hanford West split their two matchups, losing the Bullard but rebounding with a close four to three victory over Mission Oak. As for the Golden Bears, they couldn't find the offense, as they were bested by LeMore and Sanger, as always. We'd love to hear from you so that your teams get the coverage that they deserve, so please send us an email with any stats, scores or stories to HanfordInsider at gmailcom. I'm Eric Bentley and this has been your Hanford Insider Sports Report.
Speaker 2:
Well, that's it for this week's show. If you enjoyed the show, leave a review on my website. If you'd like to join the Hanford Insider email list, stop on my website at hanfordinsidercom to sign up for updates. You'll also get an exclusive copy of my newsletter in your inbox each week. You can also send me feedback by voicemail through the website by clicking on the microphone icon. I'd love to hear from you. Your comments may even be shared on the show. I also need your help getting the word out about the show by liking and sharing on social media or telling a friend For more information about the show. You can find this podcast on Facebook, instagram threads X and YouTube at Hanford Insider. If you have a show idea, be sure to email me at hanfordinsidercom and I'll get going on it. Thanks for listening. Have a great week.