Historic downtown Ashland Virginia
Main Street matters in Virginia
Read the original article by Rebecca Rowe in Virginia Town & City - the Magazine of the Virginia Municipal League
JUST A COUPLE HOURS to go until showtime for one of Harrisonburg’s Levitt AMP concerts downtown and Andrea Dono can be found picking up dog poop in anticipation of almost 1,000 attendees who will soon be flooding the lawn with picnic blankets, chairs, and refreshments.
Down Interstate 81, Todd Wolford’s walk to the coffee shop has extended from his planned 15 minutes to an hour as he runs into business owners and local officials, residents and nonprofit partners who all want to discuss activities and opportunities in Wytheville’s Main Street district. Wolford doesn’t mind. “We are public facing, we are accessible, we are easy to talk to, and we build relationships and trust.”
Dono is the executive director of the Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance (HDR) and Wolford is the Executive Director of Downtown Wytheville, Inc. (DTW), the local organizations leading the Main Street revitalization efforts in their respective localities. What sets their economic development work apart from the traditional models, is the person-focused and place-based grassroots nature of their approach and the fact that they are laser focused on historic commercial districts.
This is known as the Main Street Four-Point Approach, which was developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the 1970s when people asked for help saving their dying historic downtowns. Today, Main Street America leads this nationwide movement and helps organizations holistically and inclusively tackle their challenges and realize opportunities in the areas of design, promotion, economic vitality, and organization.
Historic downtown Ashland, Virginia
With more than 1,100 Main Street organizations around the nation, Main Street America partners with state and city “coordinating” programs to provide direct supports to the cities, towns, and neighborhood districts. Virginia Main Street, housed in the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), offers training, technical assistance, consultant services, and grants to municipalities and neighborhood districts throughout the entire state.
Main Street nonprofit organizations work hand in hand with regional and local partners – supporting major employers, local governments, building and business owners, entrepreneurs, and community groups – to strengthen the historic district’s sense of place and economic opportunities for livability and talent and investment attraction. Their work complements that of most local governments, and they exemplify impactful public-private partnership where joint projects and initiatives are true collaborations.
In Wytheville, those relationships and trust in DTW are evident in how it has been integrated into the workings of local government. “People have come to treat us as the community development arm of Wytheville, and I think that the town sees that as beneficial,” notes Wolford.
Likewise, Dono’s day may consist of co-leading the downtown master planning process with the city’s economic development executive director, matching entrepreneurs with commercial space, building new downtown parks, adding inclusive programming for children with unique needs to events, and working on building new community parks.
“I think the thing that drew me to the job is that as a Main Street executive director every day is different and we have to wear so many different hats,” says Maggie Elliott, executive director of Believe in Bristol (BIB) who has been with the organization for nearly a decade.
Downtown Ashland Association business roundtable
Ashley Kershner, the executive director of the Downtown Lynchburg Association (DLA), agrees and suspects that she would feel bored at a “regular” job. She appreciates having the ability to take on all aspects of event planning, community and economic development, marketing and promotions, and nonprofit management from working with volunteers, human resources and recruiting. “I can drive an electric lift and I’m my own finance executive director,” says Kershner. “People don’t realize the breadth and depth of skills that it takes to do this job.”
“We have to be collaborative and strong communicators,” adds Diana Schwartz, chief executive officer of the River District Association (RDA) in Danville. “You have to be able to communicate all kinds of information to a variety of people.”
The spirit of open communication, collaboration, and willingness to do whatever needs to be done lays the foundation for strong support of Main Street organizations in communities around Virginia. The trust of the public and the public sector was instrumental when the COVID-19 pandemic brought events and travel to a standstill, closed businesses, and sent workers home. Schwartz notes that RDA had the agility to act quickly and be the first ones out of the gate to publish a guide to resources which was updated several times a day.
Similarly, HDR’s Dono observes: “We were the leaders in our community and the larger region. We have the connections and know what the businesses and residents need. We know where to find the resources. We share a love of small businesses and sense of community, and thankfully, our strong marketing ability allowed us to get information out there and tell the public know what we were doing, and how they could support the local businesses.”
Guests at Origin Beer Lab in historic downtown Ashland, Virginia
With new regulations, resources, and guidance coming minute by minute, especially in the early days of the pandemic and lockdown, many Main Street executive directors spent their days and nights interpreting policy, diving into the details of funding sources, innovating drive-through lanes, and helping small businesses get established on e-commerce platforms to continue generating revenue. “We helped folks fill out grants and became a one-stop shop of information for the small business community,” notes Wolford, illustrating just one aspect of how Main Street organizations and helped to make their local economies more resilient.
BIB’s Elliott notes that “because our organizations are separate from city government, we were able to move quickly and have access to different resources.”
This flexibility makes having a high-performing and impactful Main Street organization an ideal partner for localities. For example, when the Town of St. Paul wanted to rehabilitate the historic Lyric Theater for the community, they turned to St. Paul Tomorrow (SPT). At the time Kathy Stewart, SPT’s executive director, was on the organization’s board. Soon after her Main Street organization got involved, she was hired as their paid executive director. Stewart explains, “In 2013 the town bought the property, and I was asked to chair that committee, but when the executive director left in 2015, I was hired and continued to manage the project.”
Ten years – and countless bingo fundraisers – after the town bought the theater, the Lyric reopened in December of 2023 as a live performance venue. The same year the town bought the theater, it also purchased another large, vacant downtown building that would eventually become the Western Front Hotel. SPT secured grants from Virginia Main Street, the Industrial Revitalization Fund, and the Appalachian Regional Commission that made both of those projects possible. Today SPT still operates and manages the theater for the town. “The Lyric has been our most successful project,” says Stewart, “but we’ve also done a lot of beautifications through public art – our Gateway art project and Alleyway Arts – that have been very effective.”
Likewise, in Danville the RDA secured resources from Virginia Main Street that supported a partnership with the City of Danville’s Economic Development Office to develop a Feasibility Study of the former Dan River Fabrics’ “White Mill”. This 650,000 sq ft “white elephant” along the river was visible to all visitors and passersby. Today, phase 1 of the rehabilitation is underway and will create trendy housing as well as office, restaurant, and retail space. “This is a transformational project for our city, and with this partnership in place, we are breathing new life into this historic building that will serve us for the next 100 years,” says Schwartz.
Celebrating Ashland Fourth Fridays in historic downtown Ashland, Virignia
In South Boston, DDBS served as the project manager for a highly successful Community Business Launch (CBL) program that launched five new businesses in the Main Street district. “We put a lot of time into a survey before we started, asking people what kind of businesses they wanted to see,” says Vest. “The results of the CBL program changed the face of our downtown. We ended up with a younger demographic of women-owned businesses and started seeing young moms strolling and shopping downtown, lattes in hand! Strategy-driven revitalization was a goal from then on out.”
Currently, there are 27 Virginia communities across Virginia running “Advancing Main Street” organizations, which are those meeting the highest national standards set by Main Street America. At the beginning of 2025, Virginia Main Street will designate a new cohort of Advancing Main Street communities. Virginia Main Street has been working with these communities one-on-one and providing technical assistance and funding to get early initiatives off the ground. The goal is to prepare the communities to lead fully resourced revitalization efforts through the Mobilizing Main Street program, a two-year, cohort-based accelerator curriculum for communities that are ready to take their Main Street efforts to the next level to join the high-performing Advancing Main Street network.
When you see the signs welcoming you into a Virginia Main Street community, look for spectacular old buildings flourishing with modern, new uses. Look for murals and parks. Look for thriving businesses and evidence of social cohesion from community-building events. And, when you find them, you’ll see how the Main Street Approach works and how it models the best of public-private efforts and people- and place-based economic development.
Coach Antonio Miller - Executive Director of Downtown Ashland Association
Fresh perspectives: A Main Street directors’ conversation
As much as Main Street leans on the wisdom of its seasoned directors, the unique backgrounds of each crop of new directors brings a fresh perspective and renewed energy to the network. Brady Cloven (Winchester Main Street), Kristen Kiefer (Historic Manassas, Inc.), Antonio Miller (Downtown Ashland Association), and JB Brown-Crowley (Hilton Village in Portsmouth) are either new to the job or their community is in start-up mode and is new to the network. Virginia Main Street (VMS) spoke with this cohort recently to find out how it’s going.
VMS: What drew you to Main Street and the job of director?
Kristen: Working on the national level most of my career, I came to understand that what happens in a community needs to influence what’s happening at the national level. I have raised my family here and wanted to give back to my community in a meaningful way.
Brady: I am from Virginia and was working in nonprofits with small business ecosystems and local government support in the Boston area. We had wanted to move back to Virginia and came to Winchester as this position became available. I was instantly hit by the community feel of it.
VMS: What has surprised you the most about the job?
Celebrating Ashland Train Day in historic downtown Ashland, Virginia
Antonio: The community unity is by far the most surprising aspect of Ashland. I have never seen such a diverse place work together so well.
Kristen: It is a bigger deal than I thought it would be to get the community to understand what Main Street really is.
Brady: Yeah, same as Kristen, it’s been hard getting people to understand the Main Street program. Especially because the program had been administered through the city and we just became a nonprofit. But people think ‘OK, well, we’ve seen this before.’
VMS: What does a day in the life of a Main Street Manager look like?
Brady: A lot of coffee. Kristen: Yeah, a lot of coffee meetings.
JB: My day never looks like I think it will. A lot of our stakeholders have different kinds of hours, so I’ve scheduled one night a week to work from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. with city council meetings or dinner meetings so that I can be diligent about how I meet with people.
VMS: What do you want your partners and stakeholders to know about Main Street?
JB: We don’t just do events here. We are about the program. We are about all four points (Design, Economic Vitality, Organization and Promotion).
Antonio: Main Street is about looking out for small businesses and can be a vital resource for any small community looking to upgrade their preservation capabilities, support small businesses or drive economic development through community development.
Brady: That we are a community organization – community driven with a community mission. It’s not what I want or what the board wants. It’s what the collective of Old Town Winchester feels will be best for them.
VMS: What do you want to accomplish for your community? Kristen: Being the connector for the Historic Manassas downtown businesses and residents as we co-own the economic vitality and vibrancy of our community.
Brady: Bringing stability to the new organization and to the businesses in the district. We want to be the rising tide that brings everybody along.
Antonio: A balance between preservation and growth.
JB: Being a champion locally for the city, even those who experience the spaces differently in terms of accessibility. And a ‘Great American Main Street’ award!
About the author: Rebecca Rowe is the associate director of economic development and community vitality at the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. Read the original article.