Winchester’s Main Street agriculture event was a success, as expected!

On Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012, Winchester’s downtown walking mall was filled with excitement for local farms. Farm Bureau, in partnership with the Winchester Old Town Development Board, Winchester Main Street Foundation and Virginia Main Street program, produced an extraordinary community event, Winchester’s Main Street Agriculture, held on the historic Loudon Street Pedestrian Mall.

The partnership was a natural fit. “There is a Farm Bureau and a Main Street in every state,” said Dee Cook, membership development specialist with Virginia Farm Bureau. Winchester is one of 25 Virginia communities designated as Virginia Main Street communities. Cook said that she hopes Frederick County’s successful Main Street Agriculture event will lead to similar events all over Virginia in the near future. “This has been the pilot,” she said. “We hope to roll it out statewide next year,” Cook added.

More than 20 vendors set up booths to sell their farm products and provide interactive, educational activities for the public. There were also many educational demonstrations including a hydroponics display, grape crushing, a live beehive and farm-to-table cooking demonstrations, along with others.

photo credit: lancasterfarming.com 2012

Here is a nice article from LancasterFarming.com about the event, Taking the Farm to the City.

Gentlemen of the Road stopover in Bristol

Bristol, TN/VA is a unique place.  “Two States; One State of Mind” is their motto, but navigating two sets of  building regulations, garbage pickups, tax codes and general government type operations can get a bit confusing.

Famous Bristol Sign Across State Street

However, Christina Blevins, executive director of Believe in Bristol, Bristol’s Main Street organization, bridges the gaps everyday in a positive, energetic and infectious manner.

Her coalition’s building skills recently paid off when Mumford & Sons were looking at communities  in which to hold their traveling Gentlemen of the Road music festival.

Already known worldwide for the Rhythm & Roots Reunion and as the Birthplace of Country Music, Bristol had an inate attraction for the band.  However, the ability to coordinate the many moving parts that an all day outdoor festival requires, in addition to the evenings music selections across the street (and consequently across the state line), Bristol cinched the deal.

Already, Bristol is getting tons of press about this event, but the real lesson is to be prepared when opportunity knocks.  Keep building relationships, offer value to all of your partners, understand the needs of your stakeholders, offer assistance without reservation and become indespensible.

Read more about the festival here, here, here, here and here.  Discounted tickets are on sale June 1.

Main Street Communities Bring History to Life

From the first American colonies to the modern college town, many Virginia communities have a rich history to share. Two VMS communities have recently been recognized for transforming aspects of their pasts into valuable assets for their downtown neighborhoods.

Berryville Main Street has received the Virginia Downtown Development Association’s 2010 Building Development and Improvements Award of Merit  for its Fire House Gallery & Shop. The gallery, which opened on January 8, is housed in a restored 1930’s firehouse. While the primary focus of the gallery is artwork, it also contains a “Resource Room” to inform visitors about the Berryville Historic District.

In addition to preserving a historic building, the Fire House Gallery has already generated $20,000 in sales and created three new jobs. Over 400 people have purchased from the gallery, and it is a major draw to the Berryville Historic District for residents and visitors alike.

Harrisonburg is taking a different approach to sharing its history with the community. The city recently dedicated three new Civil War Trails markers downtown. The markers stand at the former sites of Harrisonburg’s Confederate General Hospital, Hill’s Hotel, and the Soldiers’ Cemetery at Woodbine. Adding these new Civil War Trails markers will inform the community and visitors of the stories of life in Harrisonburg during the Civil War. The markers were funded through a grant from the Virginia Tourism Corporation and the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission.

Want to stay up-to-date on historic preservation efforts in Virginia? The Department of Historic Resources distributes a weekly newsletter that deal with preservation, history, architecture, archaeology, planning issues, museums, conservation and other related topics in Virginia and elsewhere. To sign up, please contact Randy Jones.

Be a Culpeper Local

Culpeper, Virginia just received some good press after it unleashed its new shop local campaign, Be a Culpeper Local.  The campaign combines educating the nearly 50,000 Culpeper County residents on the value of buying locally with a website, beaculpeperlocal.com that directs visitors to local shopping and dining options, specials, and a way to track how much of your state sales tax is being returned to local Culpeper general funds and school coffers.

This fiscal year, 2010–11, the County general fund expects to receive $4.5 million (part of which is allocated to the Town), and the school expects to receive $6.4 million. All these millions are from us spending our dollars in Culpeper County!

It may not need saying, but this same math works for every community in Virginia, from Abingdon to Winchester and everyone in between.  This is but one of many ways to  jumpstart a shop local campaign.  If you need more reasons to value shopping local, you can visit this page.

For more information on shop local campaigns and the value of shopping local, peruse our training archives page, visit the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies website or get in contact with the Virginia Main Street staff.

The new normal

Before you get too excited about the coming recovery, have you heard about the “new normal?” 

The “new normal” is the term that many have been using for economic growth that is slower than what we became accustomed to over the past decade or so.  Doug Dachille, of First Principles Capital Management, says in this clip from CNBC that the “new normal” is really the “old normal.”  His position is that the economy really only grows in great bounds when technology increases productivity in a dramatic fashion.  That happened in the 1990′s, and the growth in the 2000′s was not based on “real growth” but by financial machinations, according to Dachille.  In statistical terms this is called “regression to the mean,” but in layman’s terms we can just call it average. 

The video is informational throughout, but the pertinant part starts at about 3:30 and runs about two and half minutes.

The end is near!!

Hiring will rebound sooner rather than later and now is a great time to start your own business.

At least that is what Daniel Gross of Slate and Newsweek says in his Moneybox column, “Coming Soon: Jobs!”

According to Gross, we should be seeing the end of the “Great Recession” in the near future.  “Before things get better, they have to get worse more slowly.  That’s already happening,” he says, referencing the diminished rates at which the U.S. is shedding  jobs.  He also references the unsustainable growth in productivity that should result in new hires as soon as next quarter.  Additionally, this article sums it up by saying, “”Real GDP growth should also be enough to recover losses from the recession and return output to an all-time high by the end of 2010.”

As this was being written, the November Jobs report that Gross mentions reported lower than expected job losses and an actual decline in the unemployment rate.

Most exciting for your downtown is his belief that future job growth won’t be coming from Fortune 500 companies, but from the entrepreneurs that are the heart of every great American economic expansion.  After all, almost every big company started small and usually with one or two earnest, hard workers with a good idea to which they were willing to stake their future fortunes.  Entrepreneur Magazine has an inspirational article on several entrepreneurs in the December issue.

Growing a success narrative

Is Abingdon on the brink of a new renaissance? That was the title question of a front page Bristol Herald Courier story this week connecting new businesses in the Washington County town to a strategic investment in Southwest Virginia’s cultural heritage.

This little town might be the next Asheville, at least according to the buzz downtown,” opens staff writer Debra McCown.

“It’s been a sudden, subtle change, but seemingly overnight, the same sort of art galleries and crafty, eclectic shops that define that North Carolina tourist center are popping up in Abingdon, Va. – another artsy mountain town that some say is on the verge of discovering its creative economy.”

While people behind the scenes in any community revitalization effort know the development process is far from overnight, the article is a good sign for the systematic investments  in a job-creating, quality-of-life enhancing, tourism-attracting infrastructure made over the past decade. And it’s just the beginning.

Ground’s due to break on  Heartwood: Southwest Virginia’s Artisan Gateway early next month. While the cultural center is to be located in Abingdon, its mission is to send travelers, well-armed with tour itineraries and a piqued curiosities, out into the region to discover the authenic Southwest Virginia for themselves.

The Herald Courier article makes the connection.  And just by asking the question, “Is Abingdon on the brink of a new renaissance?” the paper establishes the narrative (and it’s more than that of an Asheville wannabe).  

Visible improvements downtown will now reinforce that storyline for local residents and answer the question with a resounding, heartfelt and fully engaged, “Yes.” It’s an opening, an invitation for further investment, and it’s a call to action.  There’s an opportunity at hand.

While Heartwood can help build a regional narrative for all of Southwestern Virginia, it’s up to individual communities to use it to construct their own success story, building on very local and unique assets.  And there are other opportunities out there in other regions.  The Blue Ridge Parkway celebrates its 75th anniversary next year. The civil war sesquicentennial represents a major marketing opportunity. And regional toursim trails add possibility throughout the Commonwealth.

But first your community has to know where its been and where its headed.  It’s part of every good tale of a hard-working community making good.  It’s the heart of our work.  What’s your revitalization story? And who’s telling it?

Getting Main Street communities in the news

As champions of Virginia’s traditional commercial districts, Main Street leaders can be effective marketers for their communities.  Working to earn coverage in local, regional, and national media outlets can help drive visitors and residents downtown.

You might have a weekend travel package that a newspaper from a more urban area would be interested in covering. For instance, The Washington Post gave the travel treatment to Fine, Funky Lynchburg, covering the offerings of the Hill City’s downtown. 

Don’t know where to start?  Assistance is available to help you get your community’s story into major markets.

The Virginia Toursim Corporation (VTC) works on a daily basis with travel writers and reporters from across the country. They maintain online resources for the press in the online press room, and if VTC staff know your community’s story, it makes it easier for them to work for you. Give them access to high-quality photographs, keep them up-to-date on your travel resources, and keep your events posted on: www.virginia.org.

Or you might have an event  more appropriate for local consumption.  Regional and state magazines such as Virginia Living and Blue Ridge Country have become glossier in recent years and now rival national publications. Meanwhile, local publications such as Richmond Magazine and The Piedmont Virginian can do double duty of raising awareness of local assets with visitors and locals alike.

The kickoff of an Advance Abingdon promotional effort incorporating outdoor scupture attracted attention from a regional A! Mazazine for the Arts as well as the Washington County News (Wolves back in Wof Hills). The effort raised awareness of the organization and its mission while calling attention to a legendary asset of the community.

What are you doing to keep your commercial district in the news?  Keep Virginia Main Street up-to-date on your news coverage, and we’ll share it on the blog.