Friday, August 17, 2007

SAVE THE DATE: “Main Street Resource Team” Presentation on August 30

A public presentation on Clayton’s Main Street Program will be held Thursday, August 30 at 6:00 pm in the Council Chambers at The Clayton Center. The presentation will be made by the Main Street Resource Team to share with the community their recommendations to help with revitalization efforts downtown. Clayton was selected as a Main Street Community last fall.

“This next step (in the Main Street process) will determine a large part of our work plan in downtown for the next year and a half,” said Joyce Blackley, Chairperson of the Downtown Development Association. “We’ve done quite a bit already,” she said, “but the Resource Team recommendations will help us focus on the immediately important things.”

Resource Teams are a technique that the National Main Street Center developed to quickly assess a Main Street community's downtown problems and opportunities and to provide a variety of ideas and strategies for its downtown revitalization effort. A Resource Team visit is an intense experience and will occur over a period of three days. The visit involves a large number of local people, a great deal of information is absorbed and synthesized, and it results in a series of concise recommendations presented at a public meeting, which will be held on Thursday, August 30.

Although the members work as a team on a comprehensive strategy, the investigation and presentation follows the four points of the Main Street Approach to downtown revitalization:
• Organization of broad based local leadership;
• The Design of downtown making it attractive to consumers and investors;
• Promotion to revive excitement and rejuvenate activity downtown; and,
• Economic Restructuring to develop a healthy and profitable commercial area.

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