Several years ago Redevelopment Resources partners were responsible for administering several areas of municipal government including economic development, housing and downtown redevelopment . Over that time staff worked to revitalize the downtown area and we did so; starting out with streetscaping improvements, installing banners, benches and flowers, coaxing owners to fix-up their old buildings, planning, worrying about sign ordinances, organizing committees and talking a good line about the importance of revitalizing a downtown area.
We focused on all the usual start-up elements that contribute to a nicer downtown than what had existed for decades. But after awhile those kinds of hit-‘n-miss basic improvements just weren’t enough to energize or elevate our program to the next level.
After years of following and promoting these modest-styled activities one of our community leaders told me very directly during one of our many conversations to just… “Do something!” After all of our initial efforts, I felt scolded for not having done enough. So staff began to take a bit of a different approach:
• used both local and federal funds to acquire railroad property and other vacant or underutilized land;
• supported new events;
• capitalized a $750,000 commercial rehabilitation program and renovated historic buildings;
• conducted environmental studies and remediated contaminated property;
• our Mayor and Common Council approved purchase of an entire block of buildings to create a town square
• placed more emphasis on business development and recruiting the right mix of developments.
Ultimately our downtown was fortunate for a local group of investors (who had been participating in and supporting all our previous programs) would acquire a division of a local company and constructed a 100,000 sq foot office building bringing several hundred jobs downtown. From that point on more investors began to view our downtown as something more than the proverbial “The Little Engine That Couldn’t”. Indeed, we could do more and the community (both public and private) responded with investing in more developments. Over the past 10 years this Wisconsin community has invited over $100M+ of rehabilitation projects and new developments in office, medical, hotel, housing and retail business into its downtown.
In this case the success in revitalizing our downtown was that the community listened to that earlier encouragement to “Do something”! For communities everywhere, the message might be that there’s no time to waste. If you have any role in your community, “Do something” and do it now!
[Thank you Bart Kellnhauser for your support, encouragement and contributions].
