Monday, September 11, 2000
Fueling a downtown revival
Town center once again an attraction
By Nancy Zuckerbrod
The Associated Press
PADUCAH, Ky. — Bakery owner Louis Kirchhoff still seems surprised when he walks through his community's historic downtown and bumps into fellow merchants, shoppers and diners.
“Nobody was walking around here 10 or 12 years ago,” Mr. Kirchhoff said. “Paducah looked like it was bombed out ... like it was something left over from World War I.”
But the national Main Street program, started 20 years ago by the Washington-based National Trust for Historic Preservation, gave new life not only to Paducah's downtown, but hundreds of towns like it across America.
“It just started over again. It came up from the ashes,” Mr. Kirchoff said of the refurbished buildings, elegant landscaping and specialty stores.
The national program began after much of the country's population shifted from downtown centers to the suburbs, taking commerce with it and leaving beautiful old buildings abandoned.
The idea was to reverse the neglect and restore Main Streets as places people could identify as unique to their communities. Southern towns in particular took advantage of the financial, research and design help offered through the program.
“People still want to maintain a sense of community, a sense of place a sense of identity,” said McDuffie Nichols, senior program manager for the National Main Street Center.
The center serves as an umbrella organization for 43 state programs, which oversee about 1,500 community efforts.
The program encourages communities to recruit a few staffers and an army of volunteers to refurbish historic buildings and bring in new businesses while helping older ones stay competitive.
The national program has an annual budget of about $3 million. The local programs are largely funded by state and municipal dollars as well as private donations. Since 1979, more than $12.8 billion has been spent on the program nationwide, Mr. Nichols said.
Paducah's success is largely because of a strong Kentucky program. Kentucky was among the first states to join the national effort, and has started 50 Main Street programs. Other Southern states with significant programs include Arkansas, Mississippi and Georgia.
But the program has come upon hard times in
Tennessee.
The Volunteer State started its Main Street program 17 years ago, but its funding was decreased until it was completely cut from the state budget this year.
While other state coffers are full in these good economic times, Tennessee has a $70 million budget deficit, said Elizabeth Phillips, a spokeswoman for Gov. Don Sundquist.
“There are lot of worthwhile programs that due to our budget shortfalls we were unable to fund,” Ms. Phillips said.
The 21 Main Street programs in Tennessee now rely on the national organization and neighboring states for assistance.
“The state was able to provide training for all of us,” lamented Janelee Wise, Main Street coordinator at Murfreesboro, Tenn., near Nashville. “They also provided technical support and information on buildings and how projects work in other towns.”
Murfreesboro has been running a successful Main Street program for 15 years. Ms. Wise said the program's strength lies in its comprehensive approach, and she said past efforts to revitalize Mur freesboro's downtown failed because they were conducted piecemeal.
Tennessee's most highly regarded Main Street program is at Franklin, where the fish-scale roofs and fanciful details of Victorian buildings were crumbling or covered before the program began 15 years ago.
Those buildings have since been restored and Franklin has attracted successful businesses to its Main Street, making it a quaint tourist destination just a short drive from Nashville.
Ms. Wise says other Tennessee communities have been unable to launch new Main Street programs because there is no statewide effort to help them.
Mississippi's program is run as a nonprofit corporation but the state contributes 70 percent of its funding, said program coordinator Beverly Meng.
The Mississippi program's annual budget is nearly $500,000, while Kentucky's is closer to the national average of $300,000 a year.
Ms. Meng said the Mississippi program has yielded 15,000 new jobs since 1993 and more than 1,500 new businesses since the program began in 1989.
Nationally, the program claims to have yielded 51,000 new businesses and 193,000 jobs.
But the numbers do not tell the whole story, Ms. Meng said.
“It has dramatically improved the quality of life in these communities,” she said. “We've seen it be the catalyst for bringing black and white communities together. Everybody has ownership of it. In many of our towns, it's been the common ground.”
Besides helping people forge new connections, the Main Street program has helped people reconnect with their roots.
Mr. Kirchhoff received low-interest loans through the program to buy and renovate the downtown building that housed a bakery started by his great-grandfather in 1873. Today, his daughter runs the bakery downstairs, while his son lives in an upstairs apartment.
Mr. Kirchhoff said he is proud of what his family is doing in Paducah.
“We're trying to bring it back and re-establish an economic center for downtown — a place for people to live, shop and be proud of,” he said.
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