NILES — As the rain poured down on the Bell Building last week, dozens of residents poured into the building for Third Thursday, a summer tradition that seeks to draw people to downtown Niles for food and music.

Despite having to move Tap Takeover from The Brass Eye to the Bell Building because of the wet weather, the event appeared to garner a crowd.

Several businesses set up shop in the Bell Building to entice residents with food, beverages and local products. Some of these businesses included Jim’s Smokin’ Café, the Brass Eye and On Base Productions. The band, Bird Bath, capped off the night’s entertaining performance with some of their original songs.

A number of Niles business owners agreed that the monthly event can benefit their business.

“It brings a lot of people together,” said Jim Morris, of Jim’s Smokin’ Café. “From a business standpoint, almost every single time I do it, it gets more people to know the business because they haven’t been downtown before.”

Sarah Brittin, co-owner of Pizza Transit, echoed this sentiment.

“People look forward to it,” Brittin said. “We had people calling this week asking what the pizza would be before we even announced it. We also do BYOB for Third Thursdays and we have people who come in and bring in a bottle of wine to enjoy with their pizzas. I think it creates a community of people going around enjoying the whole city.”

The pizza Brittin was referring to was the Elote Pizza. Each Third Thursday, businesses provide a special offer or product to the community. On Third Thursdays, Pizza Transit offers a “pizza of the day,” and this time around it was the Elote Pizza.

“I just take a food that I really love eating and I turn it into a pizza at some point,” Brittin said, “I really love elote corn, so we just tried throwing it all together in a pizza. It’s actually really good. We did it last year and it was absurdly successful.”

The main topping of elote pizza is Mexican street corn. It does not include sauce, but what it does have is a dash of chili powder, cilantro, a spicy aioli drizzle and roasted corn, all topped with gooey mozzarella cheese.

Brittin said the pizza is so labor intensive because of the hours spent shucking corn, that they only save it for special event such as Third Thursday.

Other specials offered at the Third Thursday included meatball sandwiches and tacos from Jim’s Smokin’ Café, a green screen and photo booth from On Base Productions, and an assortment of fresh baked goods from Excalibur Bakery.

In particular, Jim’s Smokin’ Café had a lot of positive feedback from customers during the evening of Third Thursday.

“We sold out two meats two times already,” Morris said, “I wasn’t really expecting that because of the weather.”