WHO WE ARE

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

To succeed, Main Street must show visible results that can only come from completing projects – both shorter and longer-term activities that add up to meaningful change. Activities aligned with shorter-term strategies focus on highly visible changes that are a reminder that the revitalization effort is under way and succeeding, helping to secure buy-in from community members and rallying volunteers. Placemaking strategies – those actions which focus on what can be achieved “lighter, quicker, and cheaper” are particularly effective and important in energizing the community and demonstrating short-term progress.

While shorter-term, highly visible activities are critical to Main Street’s success, communities must also sustain focus on implementation of longer-term projects and activities that are the building blocks for substantial change over time. Identifying milestones for these longer-term projects can be important in creating a sense of forward momentum and reinforcing to the community the need for sustained focus on revitalization efforts.

Coinciding with implementation is an equally important focus on measuring progress and results. Healthy Main Streets are built on a commitment to measure outcomes. We live in a time where public resources are scarce, and competition for private resources is fierce. Main Streets must be able to demonstrate the wise use of resources, which translates to real change on the ground: new jobs added to a Main Street, new businesses open, buildings redeveloped, and numerous other metrics of success. Owosso Main Street and the National Main Street Center, together with our network of over 45 Main Street Coordinating Partners, works to make measuring results on Main Street easier and accurate.

TRANSFORMATION STRATEGIES

Owosso, Michigan is home of the original “Polar Express” Train – the 1225 Pere Marquette Steam Train; we have a great historic park and Castle that highlights the life of famous author James Oliver Curwood, and we are rich in community theater and talented artists. We also have a wonderful meandering river that runs right through the downtown. Owosso Main Street is privileged to have these historic, natural, cultural, and artistic assets (and the wonderful non-profit organizations that run them) within our district. Over the past few years there has been a coordinated effort to collaborate and find ways to better promote our community and these assets. We have had a lot of success during that time building stronger relationships amongst organizations and have started new, coordinated efforts.

Then our partners from the National Main Street Center came into town! Using community surveys and market study data they helped us form a “Transformation Strategy” for our organization. The strategy that was chosen for Owosso Main Street was a “Day-Tripper Destination”. For our program this was valuable in two ways: 1) It helped confirm our organization that we were on the right track, and 2) It was a strategy that didn’t just apply to Main Street, it could be a community-wide strategy! This new strategy gives our program and partner organizations a defined vision on how to use our collective assets to promote our community. For Owosso Main Street it made complete sense. It wasn’t force-feeding a new, uncomfortable idea but maximizing what was already in motion. Our board, committees, and partners can see the vision.

Since the development of our Day-Tripper Destination strategy we have been able to take a close look at our current programming and find ways to adjust and/or change tasks & events to better suit our vision. Our efforts to collaborate with partner organizations have strengthened and are now encourage at the board level across non-profits.

We have created a program marketing initiative to help promote all of our downtown’s assets. The targeted direction has attracted new volunteers with new ideas and our community has almost immediately seen a change in the way our downtown is promoted. Together we are creating our own narrative, our own story.

Long-term we will be looking into collaborative efforts to: preserve and build on our historic assets; support the arts & cultural community within our district; and promote the use and stewardship of our natural resource (our river). What does that look like? Future facade grant implementation, collaborative park improvements; sculpture and mural projects; outdoor musical & theater presentations; and a comprehensive riverbank plan that promote both use & conservation. These are not new things to Main Streets, BUT we feel that the vision/goal these Transformation Strategies provide will dramatically speed up the pace in which these initiatives will be completed.