About 10 years ago, maybe longer, Jackson Hole was faced with getting a WalMart and a KMart in a small town with a thriving downtown business climate. There was even talk of a bunch of the Outlet Stores showing up along with them. That put a panic in the downtown merchants, along with the city planners and elected officials. Main Street USA is a federally funded agency which supplies guidance and matching funds to help small town cope with the large malls and outlets that are usually introduced miles from the thriving downtown. Most often, Main Street USA is called upon AFTER the big devistation of the downtown market.

Here's how it works...more or less.
The town officials request the Main Street USA group to come to town to check out the town and get a feel of whether the town would qualify for the program. A couple of hot shots come in for a week and look the town over, review codes, take photos, and then give a presentation. Town officials, Chamber of Commerce execs, merchants and all interested citizens are invited. They show examples of how Main Street has worked in other towns and give examples of how the local town is missing the boat (architecturally, signs, and so forth). To qualify for the program of matching funds, the town has to have quite a few institutions in place such as a sign code, town clean-ups, parks, and so forth. Then it has to commit quite a bit of funding, from the town budget or from pledges by business and institutions towards a two or three year program. It has to hire a full time Main Stree manager and set up offices. It seems like they required a well rounded steering committe made or board of directors, too.

If the town qualifies, they get the matching funding, and some help from the government as far as counseling and direction. The bulk is still a local venture. The gov't might have billions set aside for the program, but each town only gets a set amount. If the program works, Main Street USA gets a big feather in their hats (photos in the next slide show) and if it doesn't help revitalize or maintain the downtown, then most of the blame falls back on the town. I believe the town gets a sign coming into town announcing that it is a Main Street USA town.

Jackson Hole got the program, used up the money and sent the full time administrator on her way. From my personal observation, I can't say it ever took off here as it could have, but I am not so sure it was ever really needed. KMart came to town. WalMart never got their zoning approved and the outlet malls never really materialized, partially due to the extremely expensive cost of land here--even a distance from downtown. Once the fear of the malls and outlets passed, so did the support for the program.

Usually the program encourages the small towns to keep their home town "look and feel". They encourage landscaping the downtown walking area, adding park benches, and encourage things like downtown sidewalk sales and parades to get people used to going back to the downtown area. Signs and architecture are a big focal point of their program. In many small towns, the program can be a great tool to initiate action. The 180 people mentioned earlier in Perkins, OK might have been a list of people who signed a petition of support for requesting the program to come to town. Hard to say without reading the article.

The program provided matching grants and low interest loans. I redid one building and built a new one under this program and recieved a small portion back as a grant as I remember.

In Chemainus we redid the storefronts and sidewalks. The mural program was also a part of the program although most of the murals were funded differently.

From the sounds of it it is similar to the Main Street USA program.

If the town can get it's act together it can be used to achieve marvelous things.

P.S. We are still talking about organizing that walldog project meet here....will post again when I know more.

I did about six jobs last year under the program, and have mixed feelings about it. The bureaucracy and red tape was a nightmare; the first project was approved and paid for within a week; the next two languished for three months waiting for approvals. Merchants were very annoyed about the delays and payment screw-ups, and the town went through at least three downtown managers is six months. On the other hand, I did two carved signs, a gold-leaf window, and several sets of gilded Gemini letters, all under the program.

On at least one occasion I saw the kind of manipulative greed that can appear when there's "free" money going around; in the form of building owners who wanted me to "pad" a bill in order to get the maximum amount under the program. That smelled waaay too much like fraud to my taste! The people asking for that were the cheapest of the cheap, too; the kind of customer that wouldn't have spent a dime of their own money on signs or any other improvement if they could help it.

So from experience, here's a few tips:
1. Stick to your policies: half down, half on completion. Make sure the client knows that THEY are responsible for filing the paperwork and chasing the grant money. If the client asks you to fill out forms or file applications, make sure you charge for that service. Under NO circumstances should you agree to install a sign and then wait for the grant money to pay the balance. (Ask me how I know!)
2. Meet with the downtown manager, make sure they know what kind of work you can provide, and how much clients can expect to pay for certain types of signs. Get on their good side; they can grease the wheels and make sure applications don't get "misplaced" and delayed.
3. Don't get greedy. If a job would sell for $1,750 normally, don't pad your bill to $2000 in order to get $1000 back from the grant program. On the other hand, if a sign normally sells for $2,500, the client is inevitably going to ask you to do it for $2000, so that half of it will be paid for by the grant. I had at least two jobs get away because the client flatly refused to pay a dime more, out of pocket, than the grant program would pay.

As time went on soon the director was changed. Plans started becoming implemented. There was funding for facade grants. The design committee needed to oversee those plans and made suggestions. We Took photos of buildings and made overlays showing what we thought the building could look like and moving back toward the historical appearance it once was. We had an help from the state architects office. They showed us how each commercial building had a natural band for a sign and how size and placemant could compliment the architecture or fight it.

Eventually another director came. Each new director seemed to have a skill to direct the next phase. This project started out with matching funding from the city hall and the chamber of commerce. Soon the weight of the funding moved toward the chamber. Some business resented feeling like ther was someone telling them what to do. Then there was a merchat organization established to oppose the chamber and eventually the whole thing fell apart.

Here in my town, all kinds of federal funds have been aquired for useless crap that is not even needed. They buy because there are funds for it.
Now, there are complaints about the strings attached (read: federal regulations) and all the mandatory rules imposed on all other areas of city business.

Normally the scenario goes like this:
For years, small thriving little towns go on about their business with the smaller state highways going right through the center of town. Then the Interstate bypasses the town by two or three miles and eventually a mall or a few of the large franchise stores open along the highway. Consumers shop out there, killing the downtown business climate, and the end result is a near ghost town downtown. Main Street USA is set up to help the downtown merchants, using sound theories and techniques. Since the program has been in effect for quite a while, they know quite a bit about the issues and have suggestions. In other words, the small town doesn't have to re-invent the wheel on their own. From all I saw, not much is actually given to the town financially without a large commitment from the town, but they supplied a lot of good information. I am sure many small towns have handled it on their own, some have failed on their own, too.

No government agency forces a town to be a Main Street USA town. Even if the town does go with the program, each merchant and citizen still gets to follow their own heart--but to get the additional financial assistance, I believe they have to follow a few guidelines. I don't personally recall ever selling one sign job that was part of the program, but as I said earlier, I don't think it was ever really needed here.

Sorry, if there are answers, and there are, they don't come from the feds. We have a vital downtown area here in Wyandotte, made vital by a strong business community that wouldn't quit. I participated in some committees that were formed to help out where we researched on our own and looked to what worked in other thriving towns.

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: Richard Girard ]

There was mention of the highways bypassing town and that's why the main street businesses fail. Lemme explain how things happen here.....