Exactly two months to the day since Anand Saha came up with an idea and launched a Facebook page, Experience Clintonville will have an official launch party on Thursday, Oct. 20.

The event, which is intended to promote the neighborhood as the city’s ideal place to live, work, play and worship, will take place from 5 to 7 p.m. on the terrace at Olentangy Village Apartments, 2907 N. High St.

In the event of inclement weather, Saha said the launch party would move to his nearby Vienna Ice Cafe, 2899 N. High St.

The guest speaker during the inaugural event will be Clintonville Historical Society president Mary Rodgers, who will talk about the neighborhood’s past.

Saha, co-owner with his wife Doris of Mozart’s Bakery and Piano Café, said that “this little thing came into life” on Aug. 20, but he wanted to wait a while to determine if the Experience Clintonville concept had any traction.

“I actually wanted to see what would happen in the first two or three or four weeks,” Anand Saha said. “Was this just an idea or was it going to be some sort of grass roots movements here in Clintonville?”

With 700 Facebook “friends” as of last week, the bakery owner and others involved in organizing the neighborhood-promoting effort decided it was time to make it official.

“We’re excited about it,” said Jason Janoski, chief executive officer of the Attaché creative services firm and now a full partner in Experience Clintonville. “The launch is to celebrate not only the launch of the company, the group and the organization, but the website will be live by that point so we want people to know about that.”

The site, www.experienceclintonville.com, is intended to contain information about “everything that we’re putting forward, which is living, worshipping, working and playing in Clintonville,” according to Janoski.

“We’ve definitely started something new,” Saha said. “There’s no doubt about it. It shows that this is needed.”

Experience Clintonville, which has become a member of the Clintonville Area Chamber of Commerce, is seeking to gain even more adherents at the Oct. 20 launch event.

“It may be an idea conceived by one or two people, but we want everybody to be partners, not associates, not members, none of those words, but partners are what we want É so that you have a feeling of ownership in Experience Clintonville,” Saha said.

“Experience Clintonville is everything positive, nothing about anything political out there. We don’t want to talk about that. We want to stay as far away from that as possible.”

“I would say this is not a political organization,” Janoski agreed. “Rather it is for residents, churches, schools and businesses to connect and communicate.

“I would say Clintonville and any neighborhood, I don’t care what it is, we’re stronger whenever we’re more tightly knit together.”

“We want a lot more partners who think about one common goal: how do we make Clintonville the premier destination in Columbus?” Saha said.

“The goal for us is to celebrate and share everything that is great about Clintonville,” Janoski said.