During the Pineville City Council meeting on Monday, Main Street Pineville Director Jacob Roan recognized four new businesses that are generating buzz in the Courthouse Square.

“First, I wanted to recognize that we have four new businesses opening in Pineville this month,” Roan said. “They are all retail on the square, and I thank that has been the missing link in downtown.”

He said right now, there is a children’s and women’s boutique open and Appalachian Wireless just celebrated their opening in the old Flocoe building.

Roan encouraged the community to go out and visit the new businesses throughout the holiday season to replace the gifts that could be purchased as big box stores to increase shopping locally.

Roan said they are not focusing so much on Small Business Saturday like they typically have in the past because he doesn’t necessarily want those small businesses to be open on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Instead they are focusing on encouraging the community to visit those stores throughout the holiday season and beyond.

Roan spoke about a couple of events that Main Street Pineville has hosted at the Bell Theater that included a concert on Nov. 2 that was one of the largest concerts that Main Street has ever hosted.

“A week later, the Butcher’s Pub held a concert on Main Street Park with Zach Brian, who is a performer from the West Coast and approximately 400 people showed up for the show,” Roan said.

While Roan said he likes the amount of tickets that are sold to out of town visitors, it is the locals that need to be supporting the local shows in the community.

“We need to count on our locals to support us on some of these shows that are not selling as well as some of those that are sold out,” he explained. “It’s great to be able to take a dollar and stretch it as far as we can in this town, which we’ve been able to do with the out of town support.”

Roan wanted to explain some events coming up in Bell Theater that included the showing of Black and Blue that will be played Thursday night that is being presented with the University of Kentucky Alumni Association.

“It’s a documentary of four athletes who broke the color line in the SEC to be the first to play in the SEC at Kentucky,” Roan said.

One of the players featured in the documentary is from Middlesboro, Greg Page. The screening is a free event and the community is invited to come out. The city of Pineville hopes to have a big crowd for this event.

According to Roan there are a lot of holiday events coming up.

“We have the Christmas Parade on Dec. 6,” he said. “Several people have signed up for that, and we also have the lighting of the star that will be on Dec. 1.”

Roan introduced something new this year, which was the showing of Frosty the Musical at the Bell Theater. According to him, all of the matinee shows are completely sold out.

“All of the day matinee shows are sold out to our local schools including county schools, Middlesboro, Bell County and Pineville. Then there will be a public performance which is selling really well,” he said.

On Dec. 21, they will have Jingle Bells at the Bell featuring Arlo McKinley and the Woots.

“They both played in Bell County recently and drew huge crowds, and we’ve sold over 150 tickets to that show already,” said Roan. “Then there is the Gala, which is Main Street Pineville’s signature event on Jan. 18 at Pine Mountain State Park.”

Roan also wanted to point out that the city of Pineville was recognized a couple of weeks ago by the Friends of Boone Trace to be named the innovative community of the year.