BY KEVIN HOLSAPPLE
Board Member
Places and Spaces Los Alamos

Los Alamos and White Rock are communities defined in large part by their independent spirit and local businesses. If you tuned in to the Los Alamos Local Business Coalition forums earlier this year, you will understand that many of our local businesses continue to struggle with maintaining pre-pandemic cash flow and revenue margins. Challenges like difficulty finding workers, increased labor costs, and high operational costs persist in our uncertain economy. To ensure our small businesses fully recover and achieve sustainable local growth, we need innovative, long-term solutions.

That is the driving purpose behind the Places and Spaces Los Alamos (PSLA) Local Love Initiative. The Local Love Initiative is conceived as a year-round strategy to encourage, reward, and celebrate local commerce. Our mission is straightforward: to identify and implement methods and technology that make it easier for locals, visitors, and commuters to connect with our local business community and improve year-round revenue and traffic.

A key operating principle of our initiative is our commitment to eliminate or minimize out-of-pocket expenses and administrative burdens for participating businesses related to our activities. Our efforts are focused on increasing foot traffic and revenue directly to merchants.

Supporting local businesses is crucial because they are anchors of our community life. Economic policy experts estimate that for every $100 spent at a local business, roughly $58 remains in the local economy, compared to only $33 when the same amount is spent at a chain. The amount is even less for online spending.

Local businesses play a foundational role in Los Alamos:

• They are significantly more likely to hire local people and use local services.
• The tax revenues they generate contribute substantially to supporting community programs, including funding community infrastructure, local schools, sports teams, roads, and parks, and more.
• They help build “social capital”, which makes our community more resilient, engaged, and interesting.

Does all this mean that we want anyone to feel guilty if they aren’t consciously supporting local businesses? Hell no! As consumers, you need to make spending decisions that are best for your family and situation. We do want you to be conscious of the ways that you can support local businesses as you make those decisions, though. We also hope you tune in to learn more about what our organization is doing to help.

Your first chance to tune in is starting right now, during the important holiday shopping season.  Places and Spaces is sponsoring the Local Love Snap, Tag, and Share Holiday Promotion from now until early January. All that is required of you is to snap a picture when visiting a local business, share it on your Facebook or Instagram timeline, tag your post with the #LocalLove tag, and share it. A review or story about your visit is optional, but appreciated. Local shops, stores, restaurants, cafes, pubs, and service providers are all eligible places. If you are not sure which businesses are local businesses, visit our website at https://tinyurl.com/myLocalLove for listings, complete contest rules, and more information about the initiative. There are more than 100 local businesses to serve you in the Los Alamos area.

What’s in it for you? Well, first, you are supporting the future of our community by visiting and supporting a local business. In addition, your post makes you eligible to win prizes. Each week during the promotion, one lucky winner will be drawn to receive a $100 Gift Card that can be used for purchases at any local business. At the end of the promotion in January, additional Gift Card prizes will be awarded for categories like “the most entries submitted during the promotion period”, “the most unique item purchased and submitted”, “the tastiest looking meal”, “the most enticing looking drink”, and “the highest total receipt (as evidenced by a photo of the receipt in an entry)”. In all, more than $1500 in Gift Card prizes will be awarded.

So, can you show some of your Local Love by participating in the Local Love Snap, Tag, and Share Holiday Promotion? It’s easy – just snap, tag, and share. You can expect to start seeing invitations to play on Facebook and Instagram this weekend.

Beehaus Design, a local business offering custom branding, website design, social media marketing services, and personalized merchandise, is partnering with Places and Spaces to pull off the promotions. Here is a thankful shoutout to Margarita Ryan and the team at Beehaus for their contributions to this initiative.

We intend to offer several more Local Love promotions throughout the year, so keep an eye out. Working together, let’s help make 2026 a solid year for local businesses.

About Places & Spaces Los Alamos:

Places & Spaces Los Alamos is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization in Los Alamos, NM. Our mission is to support the creation, improvement, and activation of places and spaces for community life in Los Alamos & White Rock. We consider our local businesses as vital places and spaces for community life.