Port Huron’s Downtown Development Authority has launched a series of promotional videos to be released over the next week.

So far videos promoting the downtown eating options and the downtown shopping boutiques have been published, with five more videos to come.

The other videos will highlight the city’s boating scene, bike-sharing program, art, the Blue Water Bridge, outdoor movies and other downtown highlights.

The video series was led by DDA director Natalie Watson and shot by videographer Andrew Jowett, who was formerly a photographer and videographer at the Times Herald.

“We wanted to develop content that highlighted the unique people and places and space in downtown Port Huron,” said City Manager James Freed. “We wanted to show people the new Port Huron because a lot has happened over the past few years.”

The videos cost $3,000 to produce and were paid for using mitigation dollars designated for marketing and economic development.

Freed said he is encouraging residents to share the videos on their social media accounts in hopes of attracting more visitors to the area.

“We have been constantly trying to innovate our strategy of communication through social media,” he said. “We go where our citizens are and that’s social media. It’s also where our future customers and future tourists are, too. That’s how we will reach them.”

Freed said the city had a hands-off approach to the videos and let Watson and Jowett take complete control of the project. Freed said he wanted to take the bureaucratic aspect out of the project and let two millennials make videos that they would find interesting themselves.

The downtown eatery video can be found here: http://bit.ly/2xnXrQb and the downtown shopping video can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/2w6UVL2.

Contact Nicole Hayden at (810) 989-6279 or nhayden@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @nicoleandpig.