Some 50 representatives of Delta and other Mississippi towns met on Tuesday at The Alluvian to talk about the advantages of being a Main Street community.
A partner of the Mississippi Development Authority and Main Street America, a development subsidiary of the national Trust for Historic Preservation, Mississippi Main Street Association (MMSA) serves 52 Mississippi downtowns and presented the program on Tuesday.
MMSA’s role is to help Main Street communities develop custom strategies for improving and utilizing historic buildings, adding and expanding downtown businesses, and creating vital downtowns that serve as hubs reflecting the livelihoods of entire communities.
Greenwood has been a Main Street city since 1995, making it one of the key feathers in Mississippi Main Street Association’s hat. There are 1,800 active Main Street programs across the nation.
Stacy Pair, MMSA’s state coordinator, presented the opening session, emphasizing a four-pronged approach to successful preservation and downtown development: organization, promotion, design and economic vitality.
Different communities struggle with different pieces of the puzzle, but at the crux of creating a public identity and successful promotion is understanding what defines the community, Pair said.
“You need to know who you are in order to use that identity to your advantage,” Pair said. “Tupelo can lay claim to Elvis, for example — something no other place in the world, with the exception of Memphis, can do.”
Pair cited the Mississippi Blues Trail as one of the better branding tools she has seen during her time with MSMA.
She used the example of Woodville, a Mississippi town of just 900, as a place that was trying to come up with an event that would draw in more visitors.
“We consulted with them and asked what makes Woodville unique,” she said.
“We discovered the county issues more hunting licenses there than any other county in the tri-state area, so we helped them develop a Deer and Wildlife Festival, playing on their strengths.”
Last year some 5,000 people attended the event, “with volunteers out the wazoo,” she said.
“It helps to be true to yourself,” she said.
Pair told the group, some of them already Main Street members and others considering signing on, that the economic vitality prong is “where the rubber meets the road.”
“If you don’t succeed here, you’ve kind of missed the boat,” she said.
Main Street communities, she said, need to always remember the larger view of why downtown revitalization matters to the community at large.
“You can’t look at it as just those 10 or so blocks of downtown,” she said. “It has to be about why keeping that heart of the city healthy and viable matters to the community at large.”
Most Main Street communities, like Greenwood, are funded by a combination of city funds, membership dues and private donors, funds from events and fundraisers, and grant money.
To be part of the MMSA, members must agree to pay dues and send monthly report cards to the state office, in addition to attending training sessions four times a year.
Pair said the monthly reports are not just busy work but a system of keeping projects on track and a tool for communicating to stakeholders and to other member communities.
The purpose of Main Street Greenwood, according to its printed brochure, is “to work to preserve and promote historic downtown Greenwood, MS.
“We strive to create an atmosphere within the historic commercial district that stimulates new business growth, enhances the current commercial/residential population, and instills a great sense of community pride in the Greenwood community.”
• Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
