Scavenger hunt draws residents to ‘discover downtown’

By Justin Seward - Lethbridge Herald on May 22, 2024.

Herald photo by Justin Seward The Paxman family discovered Aeolian Aviary artwork at Galt Gardens on Saturday as part of Downtown Discovery Day.

Citizens had the opportunity to see the downtown core in the form of a scavenger hunt on this past weekend.

Cookie Crimes Ice Creamery hosted its second annual Discover Downtown Day in conjunction with the Allied Arts Council Work.

“There’s a lot of new and old businesses, and buildings and art in the downtown that people don’t even know about,” said Diana Walburger, Cookie Crimes owner.

“That’s why we were like, hey come and discover downtown, make a day of it. This year we did a digital scavenger hunt and there is over 20 businesses that are involved.”

Walburger agreed that people don’t realize how much is downtown.

“If you haven’t been downtown in the last five or ten years, you probably have missed out on a lot of new things that have been down here like Festival Square opening up,” said Walburger.

Participants could use the app Eventzee and gain points for doing things such as petting the yellow dog at Galt Gardens, or naming the tallest tree there and finding the Aeolian Avery and the ghost car to name a few.

The app scavenger hunt replaced last year’s inaugural event of a sidewalk sale that businesses participated in.

“This year we decided to just kind of up the game a little and make it a little bit more fun and challenging for people to go and use the app and find things that they might not see in stores or things to do,” said Walburger.

A picture then had to be taken and posted in the app to gain the points towards being the potential winner.

Walburger said the turnout has been pretty awesome.

“I’ve been hearing from some of the businesses that they’re packed full of people, which is great, that’s what we want to hear,” said Walburger.

“We want to hear that people are downtown supporting their local businesses because many of the businesses that are downtown are locally owned mom and pop businesses. And we can’t survive without the of support of our community and we are community businesses.”

Cookie Crimes loves being downtown.

“Anything that’s downtown often brings people downtown and we’re a food business, so people come and eat ice cream year round. For us, this is really good location,” said Walburger.

The scavenger hunt winner won free ice cream for a year.

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