It is no secret that many of America’s small-town downtowns fell into decline over the last few decades.
Dwindling populations, economic downtowns, an influx of big box retailers — all played a role. And the result has been boarded up storefronts, dilapidated historic buildings and a loss of tax revenue.
But across rural Alabama, a nonprofit organization called Main Street Alabama is providing small towns with the framework needed to bring new life to their downtown districts.
“It’s really helping communities understand how to rebuild and revitalize what’s important to them,” says Mary Wirth, president and state coordinator for Main Street Alabama.
Main Street Alabama’s top priority is the renewal of downtown and neighborhood commercial districts across the state, says Wirth, by providing instruction, the experts and resources needed to turn ailing downtowns into thriving economic hubs.
Main Street Alabama is part of the Main Street America program, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring older and historic downtowns and revitalizing neighborhood commercial districts through a four-pronged approach: promotion, organization, design and economic vitality.
The promotion approach includes ideas such as developing a bigger social media presence or establishing a “buy local” program.
A strategy of organizing teaches Main Street towns to develop effective leadership, build community engagement and develop public-private partnerships.
The design prong includes ideas for celebrating a town’s historic character through preservation and creating inviting, inclusive, “people-centered” public spaces downtown.
The fourth prong, economic vitality, focuses on building a diverse economic base through smart, new investment and supporting entrepreneurship.
A 2023 study by the private firm PlaceEconomics concluded that Main Street Alabama’s economic impact between 2014 and 2023 reached $1 billion, including $603.7 million invested in building improvements, $227.4 million in property purchases and $175.9 million in public investments.
Main Street Alabama members also produced 1,200 net new businesses, 4,500 new jobs from businesses and 5,900 jobs from property improvements, according to the report. Moreover, an estimate of more than $18.1 million in sales taxes was paid by those net new businesses.
“What I say a lot to communities that are starting to be interested in the Main Street program is that it works every single time if you work it,” Wirth says.
In May, some 2,000 people attended a Main Street Now conference hosted by Birmingham, Wirth says.
“It’s a big deal,” Wirth says. “Typically, they hold these meetings in much bigger cities. Last year we were in Boston, and in previous years we’ve been to Seattle and Kansas City.”
During the conference’s opening plenary, Main Street America awarded Monroeville Main Street the 2024 Great American Main Street Award. The award honors communities that demonstrate “excellence in comprehensive, preservation-based commercial district revitalization.” The organization recognized Monroeville Main Street for its historical preservation projects, its establishment of a public arts program celebrating the town’s literary history and its work with developers to support the adaptive reuse of downtown buildings.
“We worked hard,” says Anne Marie Bryan, Monroeville Main Street’s executive director. “We’re being recognized as an entire community for all the work that we’ve put in, and people notice that we’re doing really good things, especially in Alabama. It’s just a tremendous honor.”
Foley Main Street
When the town of Foley joined Main Street Alabama in 2015, leaders there had already committed to a strategic plan to bring more life to downtown that included expanding the sidewalks, Darrelyn Dunmore, executive director of Foley Main Street, says.
“But they knew that for them to take the next step up, they needed a more structured and organized system of creating and keeping things moving downtown,” she says.
Today, Dunmore says Foley Main Street is working with developers to refurbish old buildings downtown, including one of Foley’s oldest structures, the historic Bakery Building at 118 West Laurel Avenue.
A developer is restoring the 10,000-square-foot, two-story Bakery Building, which sits within the Foley National Register Historic District. It once housed a bakery and apothecary, but sat empty for several years, Dunmore says.
“We helped the developer work with the state to get historic tax credits to help him bring this building back to what it was,” she says.
Dunmore says a restaurant is planning to move into the Bakery Building soon.
“We’re not allowed to say who it is yet, but they’re bringing it back to its old glory,” Dunmore says.
Located on the direct path to Alabama’s beaches, Foley watched many a traveler drive straight through. Now Foley Main Street is conducting strategic marketing to get more of those travelers to stop and shop in downtown Foley. Tasks include a Downtown Dollars gift card that shoppers can use at more than 20 downtown stores and an ad reminding beachgoers that restaurant wait times are shorter in Foley.
“Now people, even local people, are beginning to recognize downtown Foley as a destination.”
Monroeville Main Street
In Monroeville, a city made famous in 1961 when resident and author Harper Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the leaders there wanted to restore the town’s historic Old Courthouse Museum that is a National Historic Landmark.
Constructed in 1903, the former county courthouse served as a model for the courthouse depicted in the 1962 film adaptation of Lee’s novel.
Over time, the Old Courthouse Museum had begun to fall apart and by 2014, the building’s southwest wall was detaching from the building. But repairs to the building would cost thousands, says Anne Marie Bryan.
“It’s difficult to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in a community of 5,900 and in a county of roughly 29,000,” she says.
“A session I went to at my first national Main Street conference was all about the historic tax credit and how property owners and building owners could use that to save their buildings or restore them to what they looked like when they were built,” Bryan says.
Monroeville Main Street applied to compete for a Partners in Preservation grant offered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express.
Monroeville Main Street won a $125,000 grant.
The wall repair came in a little less than $30,000. So, the museum had enough funds to clean, reseal and repaint the courthouse dome, replace shingles on the roof and make other repairs.
“It was such a relief not just for the museum, but for our historic district to be able to preserve all those things in that building without it being a burden on the community and all the other nonprofits.”
Athens Main Street
“One of the main issues with our downtown was that we didn’t have enough places to dine downtown,” says Tere Richardson, Athens Main Street’s executive director. “There was pretty strong retail, but we had just a couple of restaurants.”
Athens Main Street worked to entice several restaurateurs from Huntsville and Madison to open dining establishments in Athens. One of them was Black Bear Brewing Co., a brewery and restaurant in Madison that opened a new location in Athens, she says.
“What really drove the restaurants to come downtown was that we had a charming square. We’re now very walkable, and we had lots of great festivals,” Richardson says.
“But what we also offer restaurants and retailers is promotion through our social media network. We have over 18,000 followers,” she says.
Today visitors to downtown Athens can choose between a variety of restaurants, from coffee shops, cafes, grills and an English pub to eateries serving Southern comfort meals, Mexican and Italian.
Jasper Main Street
Mike Putman, executive director of Jasper Main Street, says the city’s downtown has come a long way since joining the Main Street program in 2015.
“When I started, we were at 90% vacancy. It was a ghost town,” Putman says. “The courthouse has always been downtown, and you had attorneys downtown and a couple of stores, but there were no restaurants.”
But the work of Jasper Main Street has helped transform the town’s downtown area with new shops, restaurants, office buildings and a 5% vacancy rate, Putman says.
“It’s vibrant now with the streets lively even after 5 p.m.,” he says.
One of Jasper Main Street’s strategies involved buying buildings from owners who have expressed an interest in closing their business or retiring, Putman says.
“So, we would give them 10% down or something, and have a six-month due diligence. And in those six months, I would try to find an appropriate buyer, and by appropriate buyer, I mean, someone that fits into our market analysis, someone who has a business that will fit downtown,” he says.
Additionally, Jasper Main Street offered matching façade grants up to $500 so business owners downtown could use the money to spruce up the outside of their buildings.
Gail Allyn Short and Joe De Sciose are Birmingham-based freelance contributors to Business Alabama.
This article appears in the August 2024 issue of Business Alabama.
