Audrey Walker, a senior at Grant Union High School, poses for a photo at her booth on Friday, March 25, 2022, at the Friday Street Fair in downtown John Day.

JOHN DAY — Grant County kicked off the spring season with the first Friday Street Fair of the year in downtown John Day on Friday, March 25.

The event, held on Dayton Street just south of Main, was one of a monthly series of street fairs that the Oregon Regional Accelerator & Innovation Network will host in Grant County communities over the next several months.

Zach Denney, the Grant County venture catalyst for Oregon RAIN, said the street fairs will be held on the last Friday of each month through September and will rotate between John Day, Prairie City and Canyon City.

The next fair will be from 3 to 7 p.m. on April 29 in downtown Prairie City, followed by one in the same time slot on May 27 in downtown Canyon City, and then it’s back to John Day in June.

Oregon RAIN is a nonprofit organization that goes into a community and hires a venture catalyst, a local entrepreneur who will connect other entrepreneurs to various resources, such as access to capital or training programs.

The fair, which featured 14 vendors and included a food truck, saw roughly 200 visitors, according to Denney. While music played over a PA system, people browsed the vendor booths, sat down at tables to eat and drink, or played cornhole in the closed-off street.

Denney said the fair went better than he had anticipated, given that events scheduled for March in Eastern Oregon stand a chance of having a couple of inches of snow on the ground.

Denney said the most significant impact of the Friday Street Fair is to get people out in the community to spend money at local businesses.

Denney said all of Oregon RAIN’s services are free of charge, including having a booth at one of the upcoming street fairs in Prairie City, Canyon City and John Day.

He said Oregon RAIN had been invited to those Grant County cities to help businesses. Denney emphasized that even though government dollars back RAIN, he and others from the organization are entrepreneurs themselves.

“You’re not having some government guy that doesn’t know the first thing about starting a business trying to help business owners,” Denney said. “You’ve got actual entrepreneurs that have done it.”

Those interested reserving vendor space at an upcoming street fair or learning more about RAIN’s services can reach Denney by phone at 541-589-5565 or via email at zach@oregonrain.org.