About the Program
Heritage Ohio, through the Ohio Main StreetProgram, is a Main Street America™ Coordinating Program. The Main Street America™ network consists of well over 1,200 community-based organizations and over40 city, state, and regional Coordinating Programs working together to create vibrant, people-centered places to live, work, and play. United by a commitment to revitalizing historic downtowns and commercial districts, Main Street America™ communities represent the great diversity this country has to offer, from small rural towns to busy urban corridors, and everything in between.
The Ohio Main Street Program, administered by Heritage Ohio, works with communities across the state to revitalize their historic or traditional commercial areas. Based in historic preservation, the Main Street approach was developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation to save historic downtown districts, and has become a powerful economic driver. Currently, we have four levels of Main Street programs, Accredited, Affiliate, Aspiring, & Community Member. At all levels, the local community is working diligently to improve their hometown.
The Main Street program is designed to improve all aspects of the downtown or central business district, producing both tangible and intangible benefits. Improving economic management, strengthening public participation, honoring historic preservation and beautification, and making downtown a fun place to visit are critical to recruiting new businesses and residents. Building on downtown’s inherent assets—rich architecture, personal service, and traditional values and most of all, a sense of place—the Main Street approach has rekindled entrepreneurship, downtown cooperation and civic concern. It has earned national recognition as a practical strategy appropriately scaled to a community’s local resources and conditions. Because it is a locally driven program, all initiative stems from local issues and concerns.
The Four Points
The four-point methodology works to create a total image for the community: Providing the retail/professional area with its necessary market niche, creating a cohesive visual identity unique to the community, and nurturing a cultural ambiance associated with the community’s location, appearance, and way of life. The Main Street Approach gradually builds on existing resources and fosters improved community leadership and support on behalf of the Central Business District for the long term.
1. Organization
Organization is the building of consensus and cooperation between the groups that play a role in the downtown. Many individuals and organizations in the community have a stake in the economic viability of the downtown.
2. Design
Design involves improving the downtown’s image by improving its physical appearance – not just the appearance of buildings, but also of street lights, window displays, parking areas, signs, sidewalks, streetscapes, landscaping, promotional materials and all other elements that convey a visual message about what the downtown is and what it has to offer.
3. Promotions
Promotions involves marketing the downtown’s unique characteristics to shoppers, investors, new businesses, tourists, and others. Effective promotion creates a positive image of the downtown through retail promotional activity and special events utilizing the downtown as a stage area of community activities.
4. Economic Development
Economic Restructuring involves strengthening the existing economic base of the downtown while diversifying it. Business enhancement activities include helping existing downtown businesses, recruiting new businesses, providing a balanced mix, converting unused space into productive property, and sharpening the competitiveness of downtown merchants.