Fort Payne- Main Street Alabama by John Dersham

Main Street Alabama will be in Fort Payne to host three days of interviews with a variety of people from every aspect of our community. We need everyone’s feedback as we begin the process of becoming a Main Street Alabama Community. We are honored to have been one of the three cities selected to begin this process this year. A special thanks to Lynn Brewer, Connie Fuller, Amy Johnson and Randy Grider for attending the required application seminar to officially enter our application to become a Main Street Alabama city. If you have a chance to visit other Main Street Alabama towns you will see what the Main Street organization will do to help us redevelop our original downtown historic area. The basic coverage area will be from 3^rd street south to 8^th street north. The idea is to dress up, repair and restore our historic downtown area to a thriving, bustling downtown again. Included  will be a signage and marketing program, there will be an increased diversity of businesses downtown with downtown housing and lots of boutique shopping experiences, restaurants, art galleries, art and hobby retail, entertainment venues. The idea of Main Street is to get all downtown buildings occupied and healthy. Paint, roof repair, mortar repair, landscaping and beautification projects are all a part of becoming a Main Street Community. If you visit Decatur, Florence, Gadsden, Opelika, Auburn, Fairhope and others you will see the results. These downtown areas are thriving again and they are fun and beautiful to the eye. Fort Payne provides the perfect setting for this process. We have a lot of historic buildings, great downtown parks, an original railroad depot all surrounding by attractive settings with a great view of Lookout Mountain. The Main Street Alabama staff told us, “You have the perfect Main Street setting”. We knew that all along, now we have a formal nationwide organization that has years of experience and a fantastic credible, highly professional template for us to follow from start to finish. For a small annual fee we will get years of expertise and a very elaborate set of plans to make all of this happen in Fort Payne. This is economic development at its best. It means jobs, new retail dollars coming in, rents being paid, more shoppers, more tourists, more places to eat. It also means no empty stores between each other. For the city of Fort Payne, it means new tax revenue coming in because more people are here, buying more and paying more taxes. It is a win, win situation but it takes all us to help make it successful.

On Tuesday evening August 11^th at the Iron and Coal building from 5-8 P.M.  We want your ideas, your visions for downtown and we want to know what you think. We are all in this together to revitalize our downtown area. On Thursday, August 13^th from 4:30 thru 6:00 P.M., the Main Street Alabama resource team will deliver a public presentation at the DeKalb Theater concerning their initial findings and recommendations. You will not want to miss either event.

During the process of our three day Main Street planning session Main Street Alabama will be interviewing people for all sectors of our business community including: retailers, bankers, realtors, city officials elected and employed, county officials and employees, our legislators, attorneys, clergy, economic development, tourism, chamber historic societies, museums and residents. It is our goal to give everyone a voice in this process. To do this successfully we need you to come and be a part of it. Please come Tuesday, August 11^th at 5 P.M. to the Iron and Coal building. We look forward to seeing you there.