Next Steps for Improving the Business Environment in Downtown

Downtown serves as a link to the rest of the community. It serves as our link to our past, our future, our retail desires, our culture, and our identity. Thanks to our City Council, the City has been working hard to invest money in downtown by improving crosswalks at intersections, implementing traffic calming techniques, repairing the Elk Avenue canopies, and building a public entertainment venue in Downtown.

All of these investments show the dedication that your local government has in ensuring that our identity, our past, and our culture is carried into the future. The next step is much larger and is required in order for downtown to succeed – the property owners and businesses.

When I first started in my job, I visited many different successful downtowns and neighborhoods and asked about their revitalization efforts. From Chattanooga, to Cincinnati, from Franklin, Tennessee, to Greenville, South Carolina, I noticed the story always began the same – with the downtown businesses or downtown property owners. They were the ones who took control of their downtowns and set the vision for what they wanted it to be by the time their kids graduated High School.

While I certainly understand the lack of capital that many of our property owners have, there are some limited resources such as the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit, which had been used in numerous other cities for building rehabilitations. Another tool that commonly implemented was a Central Business Improvement District.

A Central Business Improvement District is a type of overlay district created in order to make direct improvements within that district. A special assessment would be made annually with the money generated being invested directly back into the district. A board made up of property owners within that district would determine how and when the money would be reinvested into the district. As one downtown property owner put it, it’s like a homeowners association for downtown.

This is a great tool that we believe could be a catalyst to make our downtown standout in the Tri-Cities area. The key is for each downtown property owner to agree and do their part to make the small, annual investment in order to create a better environment to do business downtown. We are waiting and willing to explore these opportunities with you, but downtown property owners must be the ones to initiate the process. Let’s talk about it!