Main Street to apply for $23K grant

The state Department of Economic and Community Development has announced it is increasing the Tennessee Main Street Innovation Grant from $10,000 to $23,000 to support innovative programs and activities around the state’s 21 Main Street Program communities.

‘Main Street McMinnville plans to apply for this grant,’ said Main Street McMinnville director Chris Wilson. ‘Anything we do to market downtown benefits all of McMinnville and Warren County. You have to pass by everybody to get to downtown, twice, while coming in and leaving.’

The grant announcement was made by Economic and Community Development Commissioner Matt Kisber last week during the Tennessee Main Street program’s quarterly meeting in Jackson, Tenn.

The department also announced that $3,000 of the $23,000 grant monies will be allocated for an additional training component. Those monies can be used by Tennessee Main Street communities to participate in training sessions and conferences sponsored by the National Main Street Network, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Participation in this network by communities is a requirement of the state program and necessary to earn national accreditation.

The grants will be administered from March 2008 through June 2009. The Main Street Innovation Grant requires a match by the local Main Street Program. The training component to the grant does not require matching funds.

The Tennessee Main Street Program provides assistance to communities in revitalizing their downtown and central business districts, which are vital components of economic development and job growth.

This is the second innovation grant offered by the Department of Economic and Community Development. The first one was applied for, and received, by McMinnville’s Main Street program.

‘This grant was recreated because there were so many good things that happened with the first innovation grant,’ said Wilson. ‘One of ours was the 3D downtown project.’

Thanks to the innovation grant, Main Street McMinnville partnered with Google Earth to become the first city in Tennessee to model its entire downtown in 3D.

The project has really taken off, locally and nationally.

‘We are slated to present it to a national audience with Google in March,’ said Wilson. ‘I’ve been getting phone calls like crazy because we were in a nationally publicized news letter that went out to a lot of downtowns across the country. The reaction has been great so far.’

With this grant, if awarded, McMinnville’s Main Street Program will implement a downtown marketing campaign in conjunction with downtown merchants.

Within the campaign will be Main Street McMinnville’s new Web site, www.mainstreetmcminnville.org, which promotes ‘Shop, Play, Live and Invest’ downtown. As of last week, the site had more than 120,000 hits since its beginning on Dec. 27. The last Web site had 2,400 hits per month.