add your zip code to show your support of History in Ohio

Link to their site HERE

Show Me The Money
September 9, 2009

A diverse group of speakers will share the various programs that your downtown can be taking using to fund your revitalization efforts. Funding that you may not know about is available for streetscapes, building preservation, cultural facilities, parks, etc. Come meet the people that run these programs and maximize your opportunities to succeed.

Portsmouth location TK

Cash in the Attic
November 10, 2009
Downtown living is the latest trend across America — people want to live close to the action — yet many building owners leave their upper floors vacant. This training will share the information they need to convert their upper floors into lucrative living space! We’ll examine interpretation of the alternative building code, hear from architects and building owners share the how-to. A downtown tour of some of Elyria’s converted upper floors is included.

Elyria location TK

I wanted to introduce y’all to our hard-working volunteer, Nate Demars. Nate’s taking some time off right now before he starts school in the fall and we were lucky enough to nab him when he was casting about for something to do around his interest in historical preservation.

Nate already has a degree in marketing and he also had a career in sales working for the Whirlpool Corporation. He could have stayed in sales, kept moving his way up the corporate ladder and cashing his checks but instead he decided that what he really wants to do is get into preservation. So he quit his job and now he’s waiting to head back to school to get his MBA and figure out how to make a living saving old buildings. I asked him how in the world he went from selling Whirlpool to historic preservation and he said it’s all because of Bob Dylan.

See, Nate went to school in Duluth, MN, which is where Dylan grew up. And Bob Dylan saw Buddy Holly play at the Duluth National Guard Armory in 1959. When Dylan won his Grammy in 1998 he said,

“When I was about 16 or 17 years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at the Duluth National Guard Armory and I was three seats away from him and he looked at me and …I know he was with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way.”

Nate loved this story and he started getting interested in the Armory. He started digging around in the history and learned it wasn’t just Buddy Holly who played there. Everyone from Johnny Cash to Les Brown Jerry Lee Lewis to The Supremes stood on that stage. Nate started feeling really concerned that this great building with an amazing history was being just left to rot.

And that, my friends, is when he became a preservationist.

Nate worked with Minnesota locals on the Armory Arts & Music Center project and in doing so got to know some of the people at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Eventually he graduated, started working for Whirlpool, got transferred to Columbus and the rest is happy history for us because now he’s here writing up tax credit case studies for Heritage Ohio.

Nate is planning to be a developer with a special focus on preserving terrific buildings when he graduates. He says it makes sense culturally, sure, but he really wants people to understand that it also makes sense economically. Nate is pretty passionate about the fact that preservation and revitalization are good businesses practices and he’s doing his part to spread the word. Besides volunteering with us, he’s also working with the Columbus Landmarks Foundation on their next City Hop.

Picture by cursedthing

The coordinators continued meetings on Sunday regarding the National Trust work, the White House office of Urban Policy and thought leadership panels. I sat on the Reinventing ER panel, which I found incredibly interesting. Todd Barman of the Trust facilitated the meeting and we discussed possible changes to the basics of the economic restructuring approach as well as suggesting some new names. Most of the group agreed that the ER approach needs to move away from district wide market analysis and more towards business assistance. Often times Main Street organizations struggle with their ER aspect of the four point approach. By changing the basic building blocks of the approach, communities could have a much simpler time navigating the local economic waters.

Sunday was also the beginning of the conference sessions and tours. Sessions this year were geared around the conference theme, Becoming Main Street 2.0. The opening reception was held at the South Shore Cultural Center and the Palmer House Hotel was the host to the conference. Governor Quinn of Illinois addressed the crowd of 1600 at the opening reception. He did not have to specifically mention Rod Blagojevich to get a hearty laugh from the crowd. The conference was well attended considering the financial constraints of many communities. The Palmer House is a true historic treasure and demonstrates the reason that preservation is the best economic development tool.

The Main Street National Conference is always invigorating and reminds attendees why they work in the field they do. So many people are passionate about restoring their town and having a better quality of life. It is much easier to feel like Main Street is changing America when surround by 1700 people from every state and type of community. 20 Main Street communities in Ohio were represented at this year’s conference, which is an incredible turnout. Most people I spoke with had a very positive experience and were excited about new ideas to take back to their towns. I learned a number of things, but probably the most pertinent is that it is very difficult to explain web 2.0. The concept of an interactive web is so different from what people are used to, it is incredibly challenging to make it make sense. The best advice I can offer is to jump in and play around. It doesn’t cost anything and the benefits of harnessing the marketing power of web 2.0 is too great for your organization to ignore. Next year the conference is in Oklahoma City and I am looking forward to seeing everyone there.

Christina, Darrin, and Jeff are all smiles heading into their first National Main Streets Conference experience as presenters.

Congratulations to Christina Nichols of Oberlin College (formerly of Main Street Oberlin), Darrin Wasniewski of Main Street Orrville, and Jeff Siegler of Heritage Ohio for presenting at the National Main Streets Conference in Chicago. Christina, Darrin, and Jeff presented “Putting Your Best Facebook Forward” and showed conference participants how to use web technology as powerful branding, marketing, and communications tools for Main Street organizations.

I’ve been at Heritage Ohio for a month now and I wanted to share a couple of of my impressions about the organization. First of all, these people? They work like crazy! They work with 30+ Main Street Programs across Ohio (and their cars have the high mileage to prove it), run regular workshops and training opportunities, offer downtown assessments and put on the annual statewide preservation & revitalization conference (our goal is to have this online by Friday at 5pm!! Ok, maybe Monday!).

Besides the enormous work load they cheerfully take on, the thing that’s struck me is how committed Joyce, Jeff and Frank are to the people with whom they work. They tell stories in the office about the great restaurants they’ve visited, the terrific leaders in the communities they’ve met and the success stories fostered by Main Street. And that’s why I started this blog. I wanted them to have a chance to tell you their stories.

Being as busy as they are, they’ve needed someone like me to come in from outside and remind them of how much they do and how well they do it and how much they have to share about Ohio’s revitalization and historical heritage. Because to them? It’s just a day’s work. They simply do it because they love it — they have no idea that what they’re doing is extraordinary.

The conference officially kicks off today (Sunday) but the first two days of the conference (Saturday & Sunday) are spent in coordinator meetings. This gives us the opportunity to receive a personalized report from the National Trust, updating the state coordinators on the status of Trust initiatives. This also gives the coordinating programs a chance to share successes, frustrations, and best practices. Yesterday afternoon we participated in breakout sessions. Jeff met with a group focused on improving the operation of the Economic Restructuring Committee, and I met with a group discussing rural Main Street programs, and how to better provide quality downtown revitalization services to smaller communities. Jeff & I both came out of the sessions with great ideas we can take back to Ohio to improve the services Heritage Ohio offers.

State coordinators and representatives from the National Trust meet at the historic Palmer House in downtown Chicago to share program updates & best practices.