Gift cards good at 150 downtown Boulder merchants

BOULDER _ If you’re looking for a gift sure to please any family member, friend or business associate, you need to take a look at the Downtown Boulder Gift Cards program.

You can buy one or more of these gift cards from $5 to $500 that can be spent at any of the 150 restaurants, retail shops and service businesses taking part in the program.

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It could be one of the area’s fine restaurants like the Boulder Chop House & Tavern, Sunflower Restaurant or The Kitchen. Maybe pick up some wine at the BookCliff Vineyards, some art at Blink Gallery or a good book at the Boulder Book Store. You could even use the card at Massage Specialists and 1313 Salon. The list goes on and on.

Downtown Boulder is a 34-block sector stretching north to south from approximately Spruce Street to Arapahoe Avenue and east to west from approximately 20th Street to 8th Street, and it includes the Pearl Street Mall, a four-block pedestrian mall.

 The card, swiped through a merchant’s credit card machine, will retain a balance for 12 months before a fee is assessed in increments of $2.50 per month.

You can buy cards at Downtown Boulder Inc.’s office at 1942 Broadway, Suite 301, or on its Web site, www.boulderdowntown.com/gift_cards. Once you’ve got one you can register your gift card online to guard against loss or theft, check your balance and receive an e-mail reminder about your balance.

The gift card program was launched in February 2007 by Downtown Boulder Inc., a nonprofit organization of merchants and business interests focused on promoting the downtown through event production, business interest organization and political advocacy. Its funding comes from event revenues and DBI membership fees.

Through Dec. 31, 42,000 cards worth $175,109 were purchased, said Downtown Boulder’s Executive Director Jane Jenkins. The merchant organization has had a gift card program for a long time, but Jenkins came up with the idea of using a plastic card like a credit card five years ago. “It took us that long to find a company we could work with for the electronic system.”

The gift card program is run through Kansas-based Store Financial. It sells the plastic cards and cardholders to Downtown Boulder for about $1 each and collects the $2.50 per month when a card still has a balance after 12 months.

Feedback from merchants has been positive, Jenkins said. “The redemption rate (of the gift card) of plastic is 49 percent compared with 31 percent for paper. It costs our organization more to run this program, but we want the merchant and the consumer to have a better experience.”