Designing a Marketplace

Is your economic restructuring committee effective?  Challenges like recruiting businesses and interpreting expensive and technical market studies discourage eager volunteers. There’s no immediate result after hours of meetings and planning.  Pressure to see results from business owners, local government and the community compounds the frustration. It’s easy for this committee, in particular, to go inactive.

Main Street organizations all over America have faced this challenge, and many are beating it–by creating compelling and specific visions for their downtown marketplace.  To illustrate the best strategies Todd Barman, Program Officer for the National Trust Main Street Center (NTMSC), features Altavista, a Virginia Main Street designated community, in a recent issue of Main Street Now. 

Barman says “It will take a concrete and compelling vision of a fully functioning future marketplace to attract the entrepreneurs and investors who will eventually realize [their] vision.”   What works for Main Street communities is similar to the strategy of successful commercial developers that are good at communicating their development vision using verbal descriptions, architectural renderings, and diagrams/schematics.  Along with this are specific steps for filling vacancies in historic commercial districts.

“The NTMSC is working to empower Main Street programs to use similar tools to attain similar results.”

Check out the details in the Main Street at Work column of the July/August 2010 issue of Main Street Now, The Journal of The National Trust Main Street Center.

VDDA Hot Topic Luncheon focuses on traditional downtown design

Nestled at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and located on the edge of the Washington, D.C. suburbs, the Town of Purcellville has worked to maintain the small town characteristics that have defined the community for centuries.  New downtown construction projects and infill developments fit right into the local, historic charm.  This achievement made the town the perfect location for the most recent Virginia Downtown Development Association (VDDA) Hot Topic Luncheon, held Thursday, August 19th.  The topic: How do traditional downtowns fit in to a growing New Urbanism movement?     

Attendees enjoyed the food and rustic ambiance of Magnolias at the Mill, a former downtown seed mill, and were captivated by speaker Kennedy L. Smith, of Community Land Use and Economics (CLUE) Group and former director of the National Trust Main Street Center.  Smith used humor and striking images to deliver the message and stir conversation.      

The message, New Urbanism, a revival of traditional, late 19th and early 20th century community design principles for both urban infill and greenfield development, in the past has been perceived as adversarial to the historic preservation movement.  Essentially it was thought that New Urbanism abandoned the older, historic town core to create sanitized replicas in the suburbs. 

However, the two movements aren’t really mutually exclusive.  As Smith explained, they share a fundamental conviction; they both support the development patterns of successful, older neighborhoods and small towns that integrate housing, shops, workplaces, parks and civic facilities into close-knit communities that are both charming and functional.   Downtown Purcellville is an excellent example of this cooperation in action.

If you have questions or would like to become a member of VDDA, call or e-mail the VDDA office at: admin@downtownvirginia.org or (804) 754-4120.

How to lay out a city…in eight and one half minutes

While reviewing some of the great action movie stunts of all times, I was steered (get it: steered?) to this short film by French New Wave auteur Claude Lelouch.  While you probably don’t want to recreate this famous and wildly reckless driving scene, take eight minutes to focus on the beauty and layout of Parisian streets.  For me, this is as close as I’ll get to a romantic French getaway for some time.

Notice the tree canopy throughout the city.  Notice the varying widths of both sidewalks and streets.  Notice that many of the long, straight thouroughfares end with a magnificent, landmark building that is framed by the buildings along the street.  Notice the monuments, churches and other iconic buildings.  Notice the public spaces and how they connnect.  Notice the set backs and use of both residential and retail.  Notice that not all the streets are really that pretty in and of themselves.  Mostly, though, notice how all of these compliment each other and create a real sense of place.

After all, where else could this possibly be but Paris?

Report from the Main Street 2.0 conference

While the Virginia Main Street staff was unable to travel to Chicago for the 2009 National Main Streets Conference, Becoming Main Street 2.0, Jessie Chase from Harrisonburg was able to attend and reported back that it was fun, interesting and worthwhile.

We returned from the Chicago National Main Street conference on Wednesday evening tired and a little jet-lagged, but with a lot of new knowledge to share. Four days of sessions, presentations, talking to vendors, and exploring, taught us a lot about the windy city and even more about Main Street 2.0.

Things We Learned in Chicago:

* When taking event photos, use the “auto” setting on your camera. Manual settings are too slow, especially when a great picture depends on a split-second decision;
* Barack and Michelle Obama were married at the historic South Shore Cultural Center, the location of the opening reception;
* Despite the downturn in the economy, this was the biggest Main Street conference yet with more than 1,600 attendees, 650 of which were first-timers;
* Track your online presence through www.serph.com. It brings up blog hits, Web links, and more;
* A free blog can serve as your Web site. Create static pages for consistent information and use posts to update your community on current events;
* Purchase the matching domain name and link directly to your blog;
* Chris from Lynchburg wears furry shoes;
* The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 burned 2,000 acres in downtown Chicago. A reporter actually made up the oft-repeated story that the fire was caused by a cow kicking over a lantern;
* The National Trust makes it easy for your constituents to support your organization via secure online contribution pages. The trust can host secure online contribution pages on their Web site and you can link to the pages through your Web page free of charge;
* If you sell alcohol at an event, you should definitely consider purchasing Special Event Alcohol Liability Insurance;
* Use www.volunteermatch.com to post nonprofit volunteer opportunities. Potential volunteers search the site by location and key words;
* Chicago plows their snow into Lake Michigan and the river that runs through Chicago is aptly named the Chicago River;
* It took television 13 years to reach an audience of 50 million. Facebook accomplished the same in just two years;
* If you need more membership money, try asking for it. A Main Street community in Iowa asked members to increase their pledges by 20 percent and 80 percent of respondents did just that; and
* If you embrace social networking tools – Facebook, Flickr, blogs, etc. – you must keep them current or they are useless.

Thanks, Jessie!

You can see Jessie’s slideshow from her trip here, and all of Harrisonburg’s slideshows here.