Welcome to Virginia Main Street!

Welcome to the Virginia Main Street blog. This space is devoted to making downtown and community development information available to you in an easy to use format.

We will be updating this blog regularly, so either bookmark this page in your browser or better yet, sign up for an rss feed which you can do here.

The Virginia Main Street blog is here to assist you, so if you have any suggestions for topics or questions about your downtown or our services, e-mail us.

The Crooked Road on Dozen Distinctive Destinations List

Southwest Virginia’s “Crooked Road” region has been named one of the 2010 America’s Dozen Distinctive Destinations by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The 253-mile route through Virginia’s Appalachian region winds through 10 counties, three cities, and 19 towns. Originally conceived and incubated through the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), the project was designed to higlight the unique cultural heritage of the region and build on tourism and related economic restructuring strategies to revitalize the string of historic downtowns. 

(Photo Credit: Virginia Tourism Commission)

You can vote for The Crooked Road as the 2010 most distinctive destination, and you’ll be entered to win a complimentary two-night stay at any Historic Hotel of America.

Vote as often as you’d like at www.preservationnation.org/ddd and vote through Feb. 28.

According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, eight out of 10 leisure travelers include cultural heritage sites in their itinerary.  Each year, that translates to 118 million travelers spending more than $194 billion. For more information on the announcement, read the related Roanoke Times article.

Hawk or ground squirrel?

A parable in taxidermy at Radford University's Selu Retreat Center

“You have to ask yourself….are you the hawk, or are you the ground squirrel?”  The question kicked off the 2010 Virginia Main Street Manager’s Retreat at Radford’s Selu Retreat Center last week. 

Eighteen Main Street program managers from across the commonwealth gathered for a day and a half of focus on mission-based financial management. And while the Main Street world view isn’t quite as severe as this predator-or-prey scenario, an organization’s slightly less rapacious and continual focus on the mission of the organziation can serve it well. 

If  organizational decisions flow from the group’s mission and established goals, the necessary money will come to achieve them.  This means making a plan and prioritizing objectives. It requires the effective communication of the organization’s mission and goals, and it means taking well-planned steps to meet them.

The alternative is doing things the way they’ve always been done.  The alternative is letting the budget and resources drive the mission rather than attracting resources with a solid plan.  The alternative is not leadership, or even effective management. The alternative is ground squirrel.

Tourism magnets on Virginia’s Main Streets

It’s no newsflash for Main Street communities that cultural heritage and history-based tourism can bring meaningful revenue downtown. Here are a few examples of strategic investments and attractions affecting Main Street communities. They’re gathered by our friends at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR). To sign up for DHR’s news clips, contact: Randy Jones.

Tourism and Rail in Lynchburg: When city and state officials worked toward getting a second Amtrak train from Lynchburg to Washington, D.C. the idea was to get travelers to Washington. But there are also things to see and do in Lynchburg. And the city’s tourism officials are working on making the Hill City a destination for those getting on the train in Washington. In April, the region will participate in a Virginia Tourism Corporation advertising blitz in D.C. metro stations. To learn more, read the article in the News and Advance.

Natural History in Martinsville: Visitors to the Virginia Museum of Natural History can examine and compare different specimens of dinosaurs, as several large skeleton casts of dinosaurs will be on display in the new exhibit: Messages from the Mesozoic, including a 40-foot-long Acrocanthosaurus and a 12-foot-long feathered Deinonychus, both of which date back more than 100 million years. The dinosaurs on display are believed to have roamed in Virginia and other places. The only pieces of evidence of dinosaurs in Virginia found so far are footprints, or other trace fossils. For more information, read the Martinsville Bulletin article.

Frontier Heritage in Smyth County: The Appalachian Regional Commission awarded a $17,500 for the Settlers Museum in Smyth County. The museum plans to undertake development of a master strategic plan, including a physical assessment of its historic farm structures to prioritize critical structural repairs, development of concepts for additional programming, and an agricultural tourism feasibility study. The museum’s 67 acres feature a restored 19th-century living history farm complete with farmhouse and eight original outbuildings, plus the restored 1894 one-room Lindamood school. For more information read the article in Southwest Virginia Today.

What rhymes with streetscape?

Want to add some color to a gray winter day at the office?  Take a virtual visit to Charlottesville’s refurbished Downtown Mall with two University of Virginia planning students. Charlotteville’s Downtown Mall Rap, a musical look (Hey C’ville!) at one of the nation’s few high-performing pedestrian malls was completed for a studio course. Complete with urban-sprawl combating karate kicks and pink, louvered sunglasses, the video has had more than 3,500 views. There’s no word on the student’s final grades.

For communities about to undertake a streetscape improvement or other major physical improvements that will affect merchants and the community, check out this terrific Web site (albeit one without infectious lyrics) used during the planning and construction phases on the Downtown Mall: www.mydowntownmall.com.

We need more breaks in the day like this.  Send us a link to your downtown video homage to: douglas.jackson@dhcd.virginia.gov and we’ll share them.

Farmers’ markets around the world and close to home

With sub-freezing temperatures and snow covered lawns, it’s kind of hard right now to imagine the vine ripened, farm fresh tomatoes that will be sold at Virginia’s farmers’ markets this summer.  But for those in charge of the community market, the dark days of winter are a good time to to prepare for your best season ever.

For inspiration: check out Slate’s photo gallery of Farmers’ Markets from Around the World, capturing exotic vegetables and the sense of community that markets can foster. 

A little more locally, inspiration can come in the form of measured success.  The South Boston Farmer’s Market just released figures on the amount of produce purchased this year.  How about 1,123 pounds of green beans!  And 7,000 pounds of tomatoes! The measurements might be a little conservative, but the self-reported sales figures give the collective group of farmers and the market management something to benchmark their sales by next year.  The figures also demonstrate the economic value of the farmer’s market, and the success of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ (VDACS) Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program, which accounted for $10,800 in coupon redemption by qualifying seniors).

So this year, how will you measure the success of your farmer’s market?

Part of the nearly 400 pounds of peppers sold at the South Boston Farmer's Market.

In South Boston, it’s taking a team to do it: the Halifax County Farmer’s Market Association, the town, the Main Street organization-Destination Downtown South Boston, VDACS, and Extension.

For more information on the collaborative and coordinated approach in growing the market and supporting vendors, read the News and Record story, Banner Year for Farmer’s Markets, or contact one of the partners.

Mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a map

Maps make sense of the world around us.  They are both descriptive  (think of the elevated ridgelines of topographic maps) and prescriptive (the Google maps navigator telling you how to get from here to there). 

And they don’t always match reality.  As this Slate slideshow of strange maps demonstrates, maps may not fit so much into neat categories of right or wrong, but  they do shed some light on our perception and experience.  At right is one of the classics of perceived landscape, Saul Steinberg’s 1976 New Yorker cover, ”View of the World from 9th Avenue.” 

Maps also tell stories. In The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, Reif Larsen’s recent novel of a boy cartographer who maps everything from the concentration of Chicago litter to the flight paths of bats above his family’s Montana Ranch, the maps show what exist and they propose what might. Spivet’s earliest vision is a six-year old’s map to God.

Maps can help you see your downtown anew, and  they can point to the vision of what it could be. Try it.

As a conversation starter at your next design committee meeting, consider doing a cognitive mapping exercise.  On blank sheets of paper, have each person draw a  mental map of their downtown– the buildings and streets as they experience them.  Then discuss them.  How are they different?  How are they alike?  How is a young person’s different from yours?  What places aren’t part of anyone’s downtown at the table?  Who else should be invited to draw their downtowns? Are their obvious natural districts? 

Your discussion is sure to be be rich and specific, and  best of all, fun.  Send us imagesof a map or two and we’ll share your results on the blog.

Staunton’s strategic arts investment and the power of community

Just as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival anchors a comprehensive and lively arts scene in the City of Ashland, Oregon, the American Shakespeare Center has sparked greater investment in the performing arts as an economic tool in the Shenandoah Valley community of Staunton.

Mosedale shines a light on Staunton's strategy backstage at The Dixie.

Soon, in addition to menu of Shakespeare at the Blackfriar’s Playhouse, community leaders hope to offer visitors contemporary theater. The Staunton Performing Arts Center (SPAC), founded in 2001, has a $13.5 million plan to reinvest in the Dixie Theater and the Arcadia Building.  As a model, SPAC Executive Director Judy Mosedale and other community leaders point to Ashland.

This investment comes at a time when participation in live arts events is on the decline.  Last week the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reported survey results showing that in 2008 about 35 percent of U.S. adults attended an arts performance (down from 40 percent), and that the average age of attendees is older than the average age of the population.  Meanwhile, it also shows that more of us are downloading performances online. 

So how can  the arts and culture strategies of Virginia communities curb that trend?

One model might be the sports audience.  We watch football on TV, yet fans still pack into stadiums to sit in less comfort, with a poorer view of the action than they can get from home.  But they also get something else in a stadium with tens of thousands of other screaming fans–a sense of shared interest, of community.

In the tourism strategy for investing in the arts, it might be worth asking the question: how can a town or city make a weekend guest actually feel like part of the community? What can attach them to the place as well as the performance? How can we provide an experience they can’t download? And what will keep them coming back for more?

Blackstone holiday events keep local elves busy

Downtown Blackstone, Inc. (DBI) has been full of activity this holiday season, successfully coordinating retail promotions and image building events.

The Second Annual Downtown Holiday Open House kicked off the season November 27. Following the Grand Illumination in the town park, DBi drew crowds into downtown by coordinating activities with the local merchants, such as carriage rides, choral groups, storefront decorating, and a drawing at the locally owned Bevell’s Hardware, where the premier model train and Christmas village were on display.  A “Win the Window” contest capped the event with 27 businesses contributing gifts valued at more than $2,000. The event highlighted the local shops while creating a wonderland sense of nostalgia.

Bevell's Hardware holiday train display

DBI closed the holiday event season with the image-building Blackstone Christmas Parade on December 11.

DBI partnered with the Town of Blackstone, Chamber of Commerce, the Volunteer Fire Department and local businesses to organize 15 dazzling floats fit for marching bands, beauty queens, fire trucks and, of course, Santa.

Each event drew close to 2,000 people to downtown Blackstone, a fantastic turn-out to promote the downtown and its merchants. DBi has continued to get out the word by posting photographs and videos of the holiday events through Flickr and YouTube. Check out their Web site for a calendar of events and links to these media postings: http://www.downtownblackstone.org/.

Video: Culpeper’s thriving foodshed

Downtown Culpeper’s focus on farm fresh food through the farmer’s market, destination restaurants, and special food themed events has contributed to the revitalization of the historic community. 

Watch “Meet the Farmer” host Michael Clark talk with community leaders involved in the new vitality of Culpeper.  The segment features Culpeper Renaissance, Inc. in a success story that builds on the area’s rich agricultural heritage. 

Guest Blogger: Orange’s Jeff Curtis on rallying Main Street around customer service training

We’re turning over the space today to Jeff Curtis, director of the Orange Downtown Alliance for some tips on rallying downtown merchants for an effective training. 

One of the recurring issues addressed in our Business Development Committee meetings has been customer service, or more specifically, the lack of it.  It’s an important issue for any community, and especially important for those wanting to tap tourism markets.

Orange is barely five minutes away from James Madison’s Montpelier, which has more than 90,000 visitors a year. We’re close to some of Virginia’s wineries, including Barboursville, and we’re  part of the regional cultural heritage trail, The Journey Through Hallowed Ground, which follows the Old Carolina Road from Gettysburg to Monticello.

In addition to having our doors open and making sure people find Orange when they’re visiting these attractions and exploring the area, we also want to make sure that tourists have a good experience while their here.  So when the opportunity arose to engage the community in customer service training, we leaped.

Here are some key points to consider when planning a customer service training event:

1. Commitment.    Agree as a group that there is a need.  The backing of a committee or a board is important so that you’re not out there on your own.
2. Confidence.  Be sure a positive message is sent out from the start.  Nothing worse than the subliminal message of, “Our stores suck at customer service”.  Better to have the message that “We are dedicated to providing the best customer experience available in (town).  We care about you (the merchant) and you the customer and are here to offer suggestions.”
3. Capability.  Who do you have that can do this: a community college? A business leader?  A college intern?  Virginia Main Street retail consultant Marc Wilson?
4. Cost.  If it’s free, participants may not think it’s worth their time.  What do you have to charge to recover expenses and perhaps make a profit while still maintaining an affordable tuition?
5. Location and Timing.  Make it accessible. Can you do it before opening hours or after closing hours.  Are there competing events on the community calendar? What is the ease of getting there?  How accessible is parking?
6. Promotion.  You don’t want this to be a case where you built it and they didn’t come.  No secrets here:  do whatever it takes to get people there.  Even if they come kicking and screaming about being sole shop-owners, no time, don’t have the money, etc…  Get them there.  They’ll thank you about three minutes after the class is over.  Use your newsletter, your Web site, direct mailings, announcements through an e-mail listserv, go door to door with flyers, make phone calls, hang posters, send press releases (why you always stay close friends and lunch buddies with your local newspaper editor),  find a sponsor to help pay for advertisements, talk it up–send it out–float it around.
7. Appreciation.  Thank anybody who does anything at all to make this happen.  Give away the credit–the newspaper, the trainer who’s volunteering his expertise, the sponsor, and the town for use of the community room.  People are motivated by being appreciated. 
8. Modification.  What are you going to do different next time?  Write it down or you’ll forget.

Finally, make note of participants who get really involved. They might be good candidates to help organize the next training, and you can encourage them to spread the word to their peers who couldn’t make it about what they learned.

Let me know if you have any comments or additional suggestions by e-mailing me at: director@orangedowntownalliance.org.