Missouri Main Street Connection Visited Birmingham Main Street Now Conference
June 13, 2024 | Missouri Main Street Connection Board & Staff
Missouri Main Street Connection visited Birmingham for the 2024 Main Street Now conference. Coordinating Main Street and local Main Street programs alike use this annual conference as a time to convene and hear from thought leaders during educational sessions surrounding the conference themes and the Main Street Approach™. These sessions situate attendees from Missouri and across the county, into a prime position to revitalize local Main Street districts and their economies. As always, Main Street America delivered a fantastic conference with brilliant speakers and experiences. Missouri Main Street Connection’s network brought back many great ideas and new perspectives through the themes of “Welcoming & Belonging”, “Connectivity through Civic Infrastructure”, and “Reimagining Local Spaces & Economies” presented at Main Street Now 2024.
Our State Coordinator, Gayla Roten, alongside MMSC Vice-President Bridgette Kelch and MMSC Executive Leadership Trustee Steven Hoffman, arrived early in Birmingham for the Coordinators’ Meeting. These meetings connect our state to other coordinating programs and provide an inside look at new things that Main Street America has planned for the coming year. During this meeting, the coordinators experienced a special Civil Rights tour. Additionally, Ben White, Senior Program Specialist, and Bob Lewis, MMSC Immediate Past President, arrived early to participate in Economic Vitality and Design workshops.
The MMSC staff, board, and volunteers attended incredible sessions that enabled them to better serve Missouri’s Main Street communities. They want to share with you their major takeaways from attending conference.
Gayla Roten, MMSC State Director, shared, “As Missouri’s State Coordinating Program, we immersed ourselves in all the meetings and trainings before the conference even started alongside the other Coordinating Programs from across the county. To sum it up… WOW! To hear what our peers are achieving in their coordinating programs is a fantastic experience; the National Main Street team and the other Coordinating programs continue to inspire me to do more for our communities here in Missouri. As I expressed to my team, it’s been a productive and insightful meeting if you leave with Coordinator envy. Yes, Coordinator envy. We continue to strive to provide top experiences, services, and training to our communities, and hearing what others are achieving gives us ideas and tools to rip off and duplicate (R&D) just like we train our local programs.
Thank you to the over 50 individuals who represented Missouri’s Main Streets at this year’s Main Street Now Conference in Birmingham. Each of the Missouri Main Street board members, the local communities, and the Missouri Main Street team brought back tools and resources to continue our amazing revitalization work in Missouri. What an amazing Main Street Now Conference it was!”
Keith Winge, State Community Development Director, expressed, “as expected, the Main Street Now Conference was an experience to re-invigorate and re-energize my Main Street soul. It was nice to see and network with old friends and meet new ones. My key takeaways ranged from the need for basic planning and zoning codes for small towns without the means or knowledge to create ordinances for the good of downtown and small businesses to using cell phone data to help us understand the visitor traffic and habits of those coming to our Main Street districts. While I did not attend any specific sessions related to the new theme of many sessions – mental health and loneliness – it came up in several of my sessions. It is an issue in communities large and small and Main Street’s work helps create a healthier community by re-imagining spaces for all to gather, mingle, and get to know their neighbors. There is so much good information to share with our Missouri communities as we do our work.”
Ben White, Senior Program Specialist, shared, “The Main Street Now Conference is such a great opportunity to learn from peers across the United States, whether it be from other coordinating programs or local programs. Birmingham’s rich history provided an additional opportunity to learn about not only the Civil Rights history of our nation, but also how the people helped to bring these changes to fruition. Much is the same in our local communities; it’s the community members volunteering their time, experience, and skills that bring vibrancy and change to downtown commercial districts.
There is always something I bring away from this conference. What really resonated with me this time was that people, now more than ever, are experiencing loneliness and crave social connection. Main Street organizations, as economic development organizations focused on providing quality of life measures, can help provide this through different activities such as events, intentional design efforts that invite the community downtown, providing the infrastructure for businesses to thrive, and providing a downtown that people want to visit and spend time in. Successful downtowns can create opportunities and spaces for social connection. This topic, along with so many others, helped to fill my mind with ideas how we can all successfully revitalize our downtowns!”
Kathy Wilkerson, Operation & Resource Support Coordinator, articulated, “I really enjoyed attending my second Main Street Now Conference in Birmingham! All the sessions I attended were great and I think can be scaled to all size communities. It’s really hard to say what my favorite sessions were, because I picked new things up at all of them, even those that don’t pertain directly to my job. I met some wonderful people and saw some old friends and feel like I can reach out to them because of the networking that was done at the conference. The City of Birmingham was surprising in the fact that there were a lot of hills in the city that I didn’t expect to see, they had some great historic neighborhoods we drove through and the City Walk BHAM was amazing. I can’t wait to see what Philadelphia has in store for us next year! My two favorite sessions were Creating a Successful Incubator Space and the Quilting on the Street: Connection Generations, Enriching Asphalt. I loved seeing how their projects came together and all the steps they took to ensure it went smoothly and the speakers were great!”
Bridgette Kelch, MMSC’s Vice President, articulated, “This was my 20th Main Street Now Conference, and it was wonderful! I had a brief hiatus from 2020-2023 and coming back was like a homecoming. Conferences like these are so important for all people involved in downtown revitalization, because while the sessions are brilliant, the conversations that happen between the sessions and in the evenings are true gold. Peer to peer networking and sometimes commiserating are a vital part of moving forward in our important work. I always feel invigorated after a conference, and it recharges my batteries.
I may or may not have an addiction to podcasts and listen to about 20 on a regular basis. At this conference I got to indulge in the personal pleasure of listening to a podcast being recorded live at the conference. It is called Main Street Businesses Insights and is hosted by the talented Matt Wagner, Ph.D. His guest was Alycia Levels-Moore and she spoke about her company called ASL Creative Strategies, a Birmingham-based project management company that creates spaces, education, and partnerships with the purpose of eliminating the racial wealth gap by supporting the creation and scale of Black-owned businesses. It was a great episode and well worth your time to listen to!
My favorite session by far was hosted by the Mother of Main Street, Mary Means. The topic covered was Lamentations: Those Emptying Houses of Worship. This was a fascinating session where we learned that over the next 10 years over 100,000 houses of worship will close their doors. They discussed ideas that covered the gambit of situations: from a congregation still thriving and what they can do to continue that, to talking about a vacant white elephant of a church property in your downtown. The advice was straight-forward, well thought out and they offered implementable, take-home advice.
While it is expensive and a time investment to attend conferences like these, I can honestly tell you that I would not be the downtown professional I am today without having attended this conference over the past twenty years. My home community had many great successes with ideas we took away from a conference. One being a developer board member who attended a conference and came home knowing that he could build amazing infill housing and commercial projects in our downtown that acted as a catalyst for other property owners to reinvest in their buildings. Downtown Washington is booming today in part because we as staff, board members, and volunteers took the time and made the effort to attend. My former Mayor’s favorite saying is, “The world belongs to those who show up!”, so I implore you to show up at our Kansas City state conference from July 30 to August 1 and the next national conference in Philadelphia April 6-9, 2025.”
Bob Lewis, MMSC immediate past-president, shared “The best session I attended was about Main Street’s ROE—Return on Emotion—and how to measure it. Main Street businesses need a return on investment (ROI), but Main Streets are 90% emotional experiences. If we fulfill the emotional needs of our patrons and visitors, they will be happy and they will return. And our businesses will have positive ROIs. How awesome is that City Walk in Birmingham?! With almost no national fanfare, Birmingham’s astoundingly creative reconstruction of its downtown highways and the diversity of uses beneath those highways is a model for most of our downtowns through which interstates were constructed. City Walk is just two years old, but its planning took many years before that. It is a major infrastructure project to “rip off and duplicate!”
Dr. Steven Hoffman, MMSC Executive Leadership Trustee expressed, “I am always energized and inspired by the National Main Street conference, learning new things I can take back to my community and my state. This year I attended a variety of sessions that focused on inclusive place-making and came away with a number of practical ideas about how to engage the arts in helping make places better for all. At the Coordinators’ Meetings we learned about generational characteristics and how Gen Z is poised to positively shape our future. This workshop served to reinforce what I get to see every day: how young people filled with passion and drive are working to make the world and our communities better and more inclusive places. Going to Birmingham and being surrounded by people from all over the country, working in partnership to better their communities, gave me a real sense of renewed purpose and is one of the strongest intangible benefits I get from attending the national conference.”
Margaret Waterman, MMSC volunteer, articulated, “The 2024 Main Street Now conference in Birmingham was once again an inspirational event for me. Being able to spend time with MMSC staff at our lodgings and during planning and strategy meetings showed the power of highly capable people focused on the goal of improving Missouri’s cities and towns through Main Street. I loved, loved, loved the Opening Session with its brightly t-shirted troops from around the United States, all together showing the power of the Main Street movement. Having the GAMSA awards at the beginning is so uplifting. I was thrilled for Madison IN, where I have been able to visit their Main Street, to win this top award.
I was amused by the ‘how to say it’s ugly’ presentation (funny, light) and learned about ways to incorporate science into Main Street events. One town went so far as to have a 12-day festival with movies, activities, speakers and such. In Cape we have brought some science to the Farmer’s Market, especially for kids with good success. I really enjoyed the Opening Reception under the interstate: what a clever and engaging use of otherwise negatively perceived space. For me Main Street is about the people and the goals. It’s an optimistic, problem-solving group of people with a vision whom I truly enjoy being with locally, statewide, and nationally. “
As you can see, the Main Street Now conferences widen the horizons of all who attend from the interactions with other attendees, the location of the conference, and the speakers. Missouri Main Street Connection thanks Main Street America and Main Street Alabama for hosting Main Street Now where Missouri and the rest of the attendees learned and gathered inspiration. If you missed attending Main Street Now in 2024 you can join Missouri Main Street Connection in Kansas City from July 30 to August 1 for the Missouri’s Premier Downtown Revitalization Conference to experience our conference while you wait for next year to go to Philadelphia for the 2025 Main Street Now conference.
