Bringing Main Street to Downtown Elizabethton

You may have heard more recently about the national Main Street Program. This is a program founded by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as a way to help historic downtowns and commercial neighborhoods revitalize. The program has been used across the county with much greater success than most other revitalization program. As a matter of fact, there are over 1,600 current Main Street communities nation-wide, 34 Main Street cities in Tennessee, and 58 Downtown cities (Main Street’s program for smaller towns) in Tennessee.
 The Main Street program helps communities organize and develop a community vision for their downtown. This is essential to ensure that we make sure we’re moving our downtown in a consistent direction forward. The program also looks at market capacity. What types of businesses do we need that would do well in the Elizabethton market. That information is then used to help develop a realistic vision for the future of the downtown and to help recruit new businesses to downtown.
 The program then utilizes the community vision and market information to help transform a downtown. During the transformation phase (which is never-ending), the program utilizes four areas of focus to ensure that community goals and the vision are being accomplished – economic vitality, design, promotion, and organization. Commonly, each of these four points have their own sub-committee of the larger Main Street board which oversees the program. Each of these sub-committees would contribute to the vision by focusing on their point. As time moves on and each of these points gain a clearer focus, and downtown development will begin to improve.
 A working committee of people with a range of ages made up of city councilmen, downtown businesses, downtown property owners, and chamber of commerce representatives, have been working and considering options for downtown revitalization and enhancing our downtown to take it to “the next level.” The committee has heard from some national and state speakers on the topic, visited other communities to see what they’re doing, and studied options that the State of Tennessee has to offer.
 At this point, they are considering recommending that Elizabethton become a Main Street community but are still looking for input. They’ll be holding a public meeting Wednesday, November 7^th at 5:30pm and another on Thursday, November 8^th at 8:00am at the Coffee Company to present this idea and gather input from the community to see if there is enough support locally.
 Elizabethton becoming a Main Street community brings a lot of positives for our downtown, but there are also some challenges. The Main Street program requires a full-time staff person, funding, volunteers, and, most importantly, downtown business and community support! This is not a program that the city can just create, and the success will happen. The most successful programs are usually independent of city government with their own funding sources and volunteers. In short, the most successful programs involve you. The program will not be successful if citizens who want to see success in downtown do not participate, attend meetings, and volunteer for events. We all have busy lives, but volunteering on the board or sub-committee for a few hours a month or giving your time to a downtown summer event is the only way success will happen. Are you in? Let’s talk about it!