Thank you, thank you THANK YOU! This thread has linked me to multiple sites. I am a college student working on a main street revitalization project for a town of 1,600. We are facing 11 empty store fronts in 3 blocks, it is absurd how far some of the building have fallen and how much many of the residents just don't care. However, I found a group of women who are bursting at the seams with energy! Right now we are painting and cleaning in preparation for an all class reunion (which I fear will be very sad for many of the alums), but my long term goal for the project is to actually bring people back and make the town a little less depressed. I know this post is 3 years old, but please tell me the rural spirit still lives in some places!!!!!!!!!!
Saving Main Street Want to change your hometown? You don't have to spend millions to make a difference. Follow the example of these small-business owners who are rescuing their towns:
Powell, Wyo.: When a big clothing chain pulled out of this small Northwestern town near the Canadian border, retailers on Main Street didn't fret--they banded together to find another way to keep revenue downtown. Business owners in the chamber of commerce heard about a store nearby owned by townspeople. They liked the idea, but the tricky part was selling it to Powell residents. So they rallied support for the plan by buying shares themselves and working extra hours to convince 500 residents to invest as well. The result? A community-owned mercantile store that is one of the biggest profit-makers in town.
Pharmacist Keith Sande bought 20 shares-- the maximum sold--because "the town has been good to me, and I felt like it was payback time."
Cedar Falls, Iowa: The Mudd Group (www.mudd.com) doesn't forget its roots. The automotive advertising and marketing agency has nationwide clients and offices in big cities, but has kept its corporate headquarters in the small Midwestern farming town where it got its start. Company founder Jim Mudd Sr., his sons and their employees share their time and talent with Cedar Falls, providing in-kind public relations services to civic organizations, sponsoring community events and raising money for local charities. Every year, the Mudds express their appreciation to local veterans by flying them to Washington, D.C., for a day on a company jet normally reserved for clients.
"It is a blessing to be able to give back to the community that has given us so much," Jim Mudd Sr. says.
Livingston, Mont.: When Printing for Less (www.printingforless.com) morphed from a local print shop in the tiny mountain town of Livingston into an Internet company with a borderless market, founder Andrew Field didn't even consider moving to Silicon Valley. It wasn't only because of Livingston's beauty or proximity to fly-fishing. Field wanted to contribute to the town, which had been down on its luck since the railroad left in the '70s. PFL recruits young professionals from big cities as well as locals, allowing them to live in a leisurely resort town, but work in a high-tech, fast-growing market. As the company has grown, it has attracted employees with a passion for community activism. The mayor and a school board member now work there as well as many local volunteers.
"We felt like it was important to reward our community as well as our employees and investors," says Dan Rice, PFL development director. "That's a large part of why we stay here."
My Town: How one small-business owner rescued the town he loved 01/ 20/ 2006 by Emily McMackin
Tuscumbia is like many small towns in America. Steeped in history, blessed with friendly charm and full of unforgettable characters, this sleepy town of 8,000 in northwest Alabama captures the essence of what home should be. A booming railroad center for a century and a half, the town established one of the state's first commercial districts in the mid-1800s.
Despite its rich past and quaint appeal, Tuscumbia faced a fate five years ago shared by many small towns: It was dying. The railroad had left years before, and strip malls and big-box stores on highway bypasses lured shoppers away from downtown businesses. Main Street was empty night and day. Historic buildings that once housed booming dry goods stores and specialty shops rotted as merchants gradually abandoned them. With little sales tax revenue coming in, the town struggled to keep up its infrastructure. Tuscumbia was wasting away, and no one was willing to fight for it anymore--until entrepreneur Harvey Robbins came to town.
Robbins, 73, grew up in Tuscumbia and began his career at his father's tire and rubber business downtown. He had been away for years, making his fortune in the plastics industry and building National Floor Products, a vinyl floor tile business that he sold in 1995 for $120 million. Though he lived and worked elsewhere, Tuscumbia was always a part of his heart. When he returned decades later, he was shocked by the deterioration of the vibrant railroad town he remembered as a boy.
"It was pathetic, really, what had happened to our town, Robbins recalls. "You could obviously see that the place was drying up, and I didn't see any reason for it to."
So he decided to pour his time, resources and money into restoring Tuscumbia. What started out as a simple plan to renovate a few buildings and beautify the city park soon grew into a grand vision--to spur business downtown and create a tourist destination that would generate enough dollars to put the town back on firm financial footing. Locals had long discussed the need for revitalization, but it took a savvy small-businessman like Robbins to make it happen. He devoted the energy, expertise and ingenuity that he used to make his business a success to saving the town he loved, leading a renaissance that drew people and publicity to Main Street, boosted sales tax revenue and encouraged other entrepreneurs to take risks.
"His efforts have revived the spirit of business in Tuscumbia, Mayor Bill Shoemaker says. "We hope that it continues to grow, and that it attracts new businesses, because that is our salvation--convincing other folks to come and invest in Tuscumbia."
A town worth saving
In early 2000, Tuscumbia looked like a ghost town with most buildings and parking spaces empty, and merchants who remained downtown, closing on a whim.
"People ran their businesses like it was their hobby, recalls former Mayor Wade Gann. "They would run errands and leave a note scrawled on a napkin in the door that said, 'Be back soon'--without saying when they left."
The town was so desperate for revenue that Gann considered merging Tuscumbia with another small town nearby, so the two could recruit businesses. The mayor hoped to draw retailers to a nearby highway, but never considered downtown a viable option "because it was so distressed."
Enter Harvey Robbins. Driving through town one afternoon, he and his wife, Joyce Ann, were saddened by the deterioration of The Palace, a drugstore soda shop where they went on dates in high school. Robbins saw something worth saving in the rotted timbers and caving walls of the shuttered building. "It challenged me to see if bringing that corner back to its original look would spark some interest in bringing Tuscumbia back, he says.
Already involved in property development, Robbins had a multi-talented construction team in place. His crew used old pictures to replicate the turn-of-the-century era in which the drugstore was established. Robbins found a pharmacist to move in and put the soda fountain back, complete with thick chocolate milkshakes made in steel cups--like the ones he and his wife used to share. The Palace's grand opening in 2001 drew customers of all ages who bought 10,000 milkshakes that first year.
But Robbins wasn't finished. Next, he turned his focus to Spring Park--the town's biggest natural asset. With shade trees and a picturesque creek, the park had potential, but "it looked like a cesspool," Robbins recalls, with weeds hiding the water and broken asphalt dumped on its grounds.
In addition to landscaping the park, Robbins came up with an idea to put a waterfall at the end of the creek--not just any waterfall, but a natural waterfall crafted from rock excavated from the region. People began flocking to the park to see the 48-foot creation gush millions of gallons of water a day. To keep them coming back after dark, Robbins added a water show with lighted fountains that shot 150 feet in the sky and were choreographed to music. The spectacle started drawing thousands on the weekends.
Robbins also stocked the creek with rainbow trout, which lured fishermen, and installed a miniature train where for $1 children could loop the park as many times as they wanted. He helped the city snag more than $3 million in grants to restore its old train depot and beautify the streets, paying the required matching funds out of his pocket.
Still, Robbins knew that his philanthropy wasn't enough to revitalize Tuscumbia. He needed the help of other small-business owners, many of whom couldn't afford to relocate downtown to buildings so dilapidated. So Robbins bought the worst buildings and fixed them up. After opening a nice seafood restaurant and an inviting bookstore with a coffee shop, Robbins opened the rest of the space to merchants for reasonable rents. An embroidery shop, a boutique, a seed store, an insurance agency, a frame shop, antique stores and art galleries emerged in empty storefronts.
All Robbins expected initially was a 1 percent annual return on his property investment. He hasn't always reached that goal, but doesn't see that as a loss because "every little store that opens up adds some money to the bottom line for the city.
"If merchants are going to come to town, I encourage them to sell something special, something a cut above, something Wal-Mart can't furnish," he says. Robbins offers to help newcomers with their renovation costs and even has financed some of the businesses himself.
"I couldn't have done it without the faith he had in me," says Leslie Cassady, who owns Audie Mescal, an upscale women's boutique, which she named for her chic grandmother. "This always felt like a pipe dream--one that I didn't think would ever come true."
Cassady quit her job as a college recruiter after Robbins encouraged her to pursue her dream in Tuscumbia. Though she believed in the location, the banks didn't. Several rejected her loan request. "The banks said that they had seen dress shops come and go--mostly they just went," Cassady recalls.
Audie Mescal finally opened in July 2002 after Robbins co-signed a loan for the store and spruced it up with a new floor, track lighting and spacious dressing rooms. The gamble paid off. "Sales have been great, in fact, they've been right on target,Ó says Cassady, whose shop offers a trendy, eclectic mix of clothes, shoes, handbags and jewelry. "The traffic is good and has gotten even better as more businesses have opened."
Other merchants who have arrived since share similar stories. Brandon Romans, 25, owner of Romans Piano, never expected to live in his hometown, much less start a business here until he heard about the resurgence downtown and decided he wanted to be a part of it. "Before, the town had no energy, and that has changed," Romans says. "Now you can bring someone to Tuscumbia and spend several hours sightseeing here."
That's exactly the impression that Robbins hopes to create "because the big picture here is tourism," he says. He is building an antebellum hotel to draw more visitors to Tuscumbia, regularly purchases billboards and sponsors events to publicize the town and buys space in the Sunday newspaper so merchants can advertise together for a discounted rate.
"This town, in particular, has a lot of history and a lot of reasons to preserve it,"Robbins says. "Maybe some towns don't. But if anyone cares about the past or even the future at all, they don't want to see their hometown deteriorate."
Though revenue, residency and retail business are rising for the first time in 30 years, Robbins, who has many more ideas for his hometown, sees his work here as only half done. Coldwater Seed & Supply owner Dwight James sees a legacy that he and other small-business owners feel obligated to live up to.
"You've got people here taking more pride in their businesses, for a change; you have people cleaning up their buildings, for a change," James says. "People take risks now that they never would have taken without Harvey's insight and vision into what Tuscumbia could become.
"Most people, if they had that kind of money, would spend it on themselves. Few would do all this for a town. Every small town in America would like to have a Harvey Robbins. People don't invest in towns anymore like he has."
Many small rural towns have seen their commercial centers abandoned as people started driving longer and longer distances on a regular basis, and as larger super stores replaced smaller owner-run stores. While people gained the increased variety and lower costs of these larger stores, what they lost was all the other important functions neighborhood and small town stores provided -
* places to meet; * places to share information about what was happening in the community; * individualized attention and personalized service; * a local economy that spread wealth around the community, and * knowing the people in every shop.
In the small rural town of Bonlee we are renovating three old storefronts built in the 1920's, when Bonlee was a rail center for the surrounding community and a small center of commerce. These three stores operated as a grocery store, barber shop, and bank, all important community centers of activity, that closed in the 1970's.
The buildings were used for a variety of purposes after that, but never had the community value that the original uses provided. When we bought the buildings in the 1990's they were vacant, used for storage, or used for individual use. They were run down and in risk of deteriorating to the point of unusable.
Bonlee is still a hub of activity. It is a very busy crossroads, has a K-8 School, Post Office, Sawmill, Fire Station, Gas Station/Convenience Store, Poultry Supply Business, Car Repair and a Hardware Store. Sadly, these three stores standing empty in the center of town gave the town a look of inactivity and dilapidation.
Our goal in renovating these 3 stores is to preserve the buildings while encouraging economic development in this rural crossroads town and thus contributing to revitalizing Bonlee. By re-opening these 3 abandoned stores the town will function better as a town, not just a crossroads. These stores represent more than their physical structure, they also represent the extended community.
Original architectural features of the buildings are being preserved along with updates for today's marketplace - internet access and computer networking.
I've been doing some research and reading about small town renewal programs and success stories and thought I'd start occasionally posting what I find here on the site. I'm hoping that what I find and post will help someone somewhere - if not in Holly Grove, then in another community struggling to survive.
I'm a big believer in the old saying that one person can make a difference and from what I'm finding, that's true.
Anyway, here's the first article - it's about the renewal of a small town in Ohio called Nelsonville....
Caffeinated Community Comeback: Small Ohio Town Discovers Power of Networking by Frances Moore Lappé
Just five years ago Nelsonville looked pretty sad. In this southern Ohio town of just over 5,000, crumbling sidewalks bordered empty storefronts. Only two stores were still doing business around the once-charming town square.
“But this place had an amazing history,” June Holley told us during a recent workshop of the UpliftAcademy held in Wellesley, Massachusetts. “The area around Nelsonville was the birthplace of the CIO.” But when coal mining left this Appalachian community in the late 1900s, so did the community’s life.
Or so it seemed.
Then, in 2003, Miki Brooks opened FullBrooks Coffee Shop on the Square. Brooks thought she was satisfying a desire for good coffee, but it turned out she was quenching another, deeper thirst as well.
Within a few months, FullBrooks had become a conversation hub, a new town square in which folks – from the local community college to local foundations and local businesses – began to talk…and to dream. They realized the area was rich in artisans, from painters and weavers to woodworkers and potters.
June, an evangelist for the power of networks, explained that within five years, the empty buildings were full of shops selling the works of hundreds of local artisans. A new culinary school opened a “fabulous restaurant,” June, a self-described “foodie,” proclaimed.
“The coffee shop provided a missing public space where people could start cooking up stuff,” she explained.
And they cooked up all sorts of things. Among their ideas is Final Fridays, a weekly event offering entertainment in the refurbished “Opera House”, free food samples, and lots of specials at local shops. Thousands of people — mostly from neighboring communities-- saunter around the square, visiting neighbors and enjoying local street musicians (often young people).
Everywhere is a “field of potential,” said June, which we generally cannot see. “We have to dream together to begin to see and believe.”
The goal, according to June, is creating “smart networks” – networks that are always learning. A primary quality of such a network is “listening,” she said, “to what’s working and what could be better. There were amazing artisans opening shops,” for example, “but not enough customers,” she said. Individually, they couldn’t afford a marketing budget; together, they could. So artisans joined together to use their contributions to leverage enough funding from a local foundation to create a stunning marketing brochure.
And the lessons from Nelsonville that June shared with us?
At first local officials didn’t give much weight to the locals’ vision. “How do we get traditional economic development people to appreciate the possibility here?” asked June. Their answer, in part, was to bring in outside experts to offer their stamp of approval. “This shifted the views of local development people,” she said.
Another lesson is that small collaborations can lead to big outcomes. She asked us to consider the “power of twosies” – just two individuals committing to take action can set off powerful ripples, she explained. “There are probably a thousand twosies happening right now.”
Third, radio is “really, really important,” she found. Most media are so negative, she lamented, but Nelsonville locals used their local radio stations to spread the word about the town’s renewal and to draw people in.
“One outcome is a fabulous arts program for children,” Jane explained. She showed us a photo of a five year-old entrepreneur selling her works of art. “She comes from low-income family and says she’s going to use the money for college,” Jane explained.
Finally, June stressed, “Messes are really important. This is not a linear process!” She noted that her own organization, Acenet, made its biggest breakthroughs because of messes. It’s the embrace of our “messes” that allows us to experiment and make breakthroughs, she’s convinced.
June opened her talk with a photo: a cross section of plant roots showing the intricate lacework of fungi working with the plant’s roots to reach deep into the soil and more effectively feed the plants. That was the image of networks she wanted us to hold in minds as we listened to her story of Nelsonville’s reweaving.
An expressive speaker in a natty jean jacket, June describes herself as a network weaver, who helps others learn the art. All of us are network weavers, she believes, but we can become better ones, asking ourselves and each other: To whom do you relate? From whom do you get new ideas?
For twenty years executive director of the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks, June now helps communities around the globe form Smart Networks by training and supporting Network Weavers. “Networks are the relationships that enable us to find and spread new ideas,” she told us.
