State budget cuts bring woes to Main Street

Are state budget cuts threatening your Main Street program?  This Thursday, we will talk to Kay Coches of Meadville, PA about the situation in Pennsylvania.  Meadville is a strong candidate to be selected by the program as a Main Street town.  Although many state Main Street programs do not provide funding for their towns, many do, including Pennsylvania’s.  Kay will talk about some Meadville promotional efforts that are moving forward regardless of whether they will receive funding or not.

If your state’s financial problems are impacting your downtown initiatives, particularly in small towns, please call in to share your story.

This is free and open call.  You are welcome to call in, or just listen on the web.  A recording of the event will be posted immediately after the event, which can be accessed by the link below.

EVENT:  Possible state budget cuts to Main Street programs
DATE & TIME: Thursday, July 30th at 10:00am Eastern
FORMAT: Simulcast! (Attend via Phone or Webcast — it’s your choice)
TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, OR HEAR A RECORDING OF IT, CLICK THIS LINK NOW…

Small Towns, Big Ideas

Will Lambe, author of  Small Towns, Big Ideas: Case Studies in Small Town Community Economic Development, will be the featured guest for the next smallwander.com conference call.

The University of North Carolina’s School of Government, in collaboration with the North Carolina Rural Center published the book, which is the result of a yearlong study by Lambe, associate director of the Community and Economic Development Program at the School of Government.  The collection features real stories, from real places that are successfully confronting real challenges similar to those facing small communities everywhere, such as globalization, geographic isolation, urban sprawl, aging populations, and natural disasters.

Small Towns, Big Ideas profiles towns in 18 states ranging in population from 175 (Chimney Rock, N.C.) to 15,000 (Helena-West Helena, Ark.).  The case studies are told in an engaging narrative that includes information useful to civic leaders in small communities and policymakers dealing with rural development issues.

According to Lambe, “One of the main themes emerging from these case studies is that successful small towns tend to employ a range of strategies that cut across community and economic development broadly.  The case studies allow us to take the strategies apart and to draw conclusions about how and why particular strategies work across a wide range of small communities.”

Lambe is also interim director for the North Carolina Local Government Service Corps, a three-year initiative that will place graduates of the Master of Public Administration programs at UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Wilmington, and Appalachian State University into the service of economically distressed rural communities, beginning in 2009.  The Service Corps was initiated as a result of observing—during the Small Towns, Big Ideas study—the need for economic development and capacity-building assistance in many small communities.

Small Towns, Big Ideas can be downloaded from www.cednc.unc.edu/stbi.  The site also features a database of the case studies, searchable by criteria such as community type, location, and population.  A hard-copy of the publication can be ordered through the Rural Center’s website at www.ncruralcenter.org.

Our live conversation with Will will take place on Monday, March 30, at 10 am.  It’s free and open to the public.  There is also an option for you to type in your questions.  Immediately after the talk, a recording will be posted.

Here is the dial-in information:

EVENT:  Small towns, big ideas
DATE & TIME: Monday, March 30th at 10:00am Eastern
FORMAT: Simulcast! (Attend via Phone or Webcast — it’s your choice)
TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, CLICK THIS LINK NOW…

Judy Wicks on Local Living Economies

I went to a talk given by Judy Wicks last night at the NC Museum of History, hosted by the Center for Environmental Farming Systems.  As one member of the audience commented, Judy is a dynamo.

She is a co-founder of Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), which builds networks of locally-owned businesses within communities that promote buying from each other, respecting the environment, and paying a living wage.  At home, she built the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia.  Each of the networks draws on local experts representing the building blocks of a sustainable economy:  food, power, health, construction, etc.

She is a living example of following her conscience.  As the owner of the White Dog Cafe, she originally felt resistance to the living wage movement because she did not want to be told by others what she should pay her employees.  But after looking at the faces of her trusted staff, she thought, of course she wanted to make sure they were able to cover their basic needs.

This personal connection with people and place has been an ongoing theme for her.  She feels personally responsible for her restaurant’s location, which is also where she lives.  She has been living on the second floor of her brownstone building in Philadelphia ever since she fought to prevent it from being torn down to make room for a mall.  After a drought died up the natural areas close to home, she became conscious of how she was contributing to global warming and converted her restaurant to run on 100% renewable energy.

The White Dog Cafe is famous for being the first in the Philadelphia area to use humanely-raised cows and pigs and organic produce.  In order to make that happen, she had to personally set up a network of suppliers.  And, she didn’t stop there.  She felt strongly enough about shifting her local economy away from factory farming, the Cafe provided capital to help the suppliers distribute the good stuff to her competitors.  This grew into a non-profit, White Dog Community Enterprises, which receives 20% of their income from the for-profit restaurant.

Believe it or not, there is more.  Her life and work is a great example of the benefits of carefully building local living economies. Smallwander.com believes that towns that incorporate these principles are also great places to visit, since they are living and vibrant, take care of their people and animals, have unique activities going on, and celebrate the authentic.

Mainstreet podcast

Freddie Killough, Executive Director of the Marion Downtown Business Association and Bob Bamberg, Executive Director of the Alleghany County Chamber of Commerce, discussed the Main Street program of North Carolina in today’s monthly conference call.  Listen here: Main street managers.

Or, subscribe to the podcast.

Suburbs are out

From Confessions of a Small-Church Pastor:

The Decline of the Suburbs

CNN notes today that 40% of Americans want to live in “walkable” communities, and that the suburbs as we know them may be an endangered species. The subprime mortgage crisis, which put many people in homes they could not afford, has led to record foreclosures, bankruptcies and repossessions. Some homeowners, facing falling home values, are abandoning their dream homes altogether.

Professor Arthur C. Nelson contends that by 2025, America will face a surplus of 22-million large lot (suburban) homes. Some suburban developments are noticing an increase in crime, unkempt lawns, graffitti covered sidewalks, and other signs of “suburban decay” which is the same as urban decay, only in a different neighborhood.

[read whole article...]

Main Street Managers

Have you ever wondered what Main Street managers do? Is your town considering applying to the National Trust for Historic Preservation to become a Main Street community?

Our next smallwander.com teleseminar will invite Main Street managers to share their stories with us. It’s free for you to call in and talk, or just listen in, and type you question in to us. We have a new discussion on the last Monday of every month at 10 am. Here are the dial-in details for June’s talk:

EVENT: Mainstreet Managers
DATE & TIME: Monday, June 30th at 10:00am Eastern
FORMAT: Simulcast! (Attend via Phone or Webcast — it’s your choice)
TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, CLICK THIS LINK NOW…
http://instantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=3219519

Travel to Main Street to shop–by train

Here is an interesting post from teaberries in All the Little Stuff That is Life.

“What I’m saying, is 1) bring back Main Street shopping, only maybe this time, we need to base it on more European models of villages and towns. 2) It’s time for the big-box retailers to break themselves down, and start fitting into the mold of small town America. Then 3) reform transportation, start using trains again. This country has thousands of small towns, and hundreds of miles of railroad tracks connecting them. Use them, again. Refer, again, to Europe and Japan.”

Full article…

Preserving Small Towns

Check out Preserving Small Towns. Bill Lofquist is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo, a member of the Geneseo Village Board and a leader of Please Don’t Destroy Geneseo. Geneseo is a beautiful town in the Finger Lake region of New York.  Of course, I’m biased, having grown up in Albany. Here’s a great post on the full value of main street.