ELLENVILLE - The Ellenville Noonday Club and the Ellenville-Wawarsing Chamber of Commerce (EWCOC) have gotten together to help promote the community. The promotional campaign will take the form of banners that will be hung on utility poles throughout the area. The plan is similar to efforts in other communities, such as Wurtsboro, that in recent years have begun to look for new ways to promote their communities now that the resorts are becoming a distant memory.

More importantly, the banners are also available for sponsorship, meaning that local businesses and other professionals now have a way to help boost business while at the same time promoting the area itself.

"It promotes the village," says Earl Thornton, one of the organizers of the campaign. "If you go around to all the other, sister towns, they have banners."

Thornton says that the effort can be seen as a way of rebranding an area that many would agree is in the process of remaking itself.

The double-sided banners are 30 inches wide by five feet high, and they depict a hang glider, Sam's Point, and a comedy-tragedy mask (to represent the Shadowland Theater).

In a press release, the Noonday Club and the EWCOC said that there were many good ideas as to the images that would appear on the banners, but chose these images as they are among the most easily recognizable in this area -- and all are closely associated with the Village of Ellenville.

The banners have a life expectancy of five years, which means that the $150 cost is quite nominal. There are also plans to create holiday banners, but this is still in the planning stage.

"[At] a cost of only $30.00 per year for the life of the banner, it's a great advertizing bargain," the press release said.

For more information on the campaign, or to find out how your business can join the promotion, please call 845-647-5321 and ask for Earl Thornton or Judie DuPlessis.