Downtown Success: A Journey, Not A Destination.

Having just come off a win of the 2013 Great American Main Street Award (GAMSA), you can imagine the enthusiasm and buzz here in Downtown Rochester.  But as the initial excitement starts to settle down, there are a lot of serious conversations happening around the same question - where do we go from here?  On this topic, people are clearly in two camps.  There are those (including myself) who believe we are entering a new phase development for our downtown and the organization.  There are many mountains to climb and we need to get our plan in place.  There is another group that believes that we are at the pinnacle of our success and it's been a great run, but maybe we are done.

Yes, as you might imagine, I almost croaked when I heard that there was discussion of being "done".  To me, it is the cardinal sin of any downtown organization.  My first instinct was to shout from the rooftops all the reasons why we need to continue.  How could someone in my town actually say that we are done?  But then it hit me, maybe we haven't been doing a good job of communicating.

When you look at the Committee Work Plans, you see projects with defined budgets and start/finish dates.  It's a simple system to keep everyone on track and it accomplishes that goal.  But what it doesn't do it allow people to see the big picture of what our organization is about. We were established in 1983 and back then, anyone could tell you why we were established and what we needed to do.

Our Mission Statement:

To maximize the economic development potential of Downtown Rochester for the benefit of the community by maintaining an ongoing, comprehensive downtown management program with broad-based community involvement, seeking reuse of historic and architecturally significant buildings whenever possible, respecting the natural environment, and by preserving downtown's overall unique historical character.

Fast forward thirty years and downtown has definitely changed, and so has our organization.  And while our mission is the same, the way we are executing it is much different.  It's absolutely to be expected and we should have seen it sooner.  Back in the day, our organization was focused on physical improvements - lightpoles, streetscape, downtown facades, purchasing parking lots, etc.  Now we are focused on development of our properties, business recruitment/retention and attracting visitors to our district through innovative promotions and spectacular special events.

I've learned so many things since our GAMSA win (ooh, I feel another blog post coming on), but what it opened my eyes to is that while I believe that there is no real end goal for a downtown organization we have to continually prove our existence. Downtown success truly is a journey, with many exciting stops and challenging detours along the way.  But if we want to continue down this road, we have to take a hard look at who we are and what we need to do to keep our downtown vibrant and viable.  All I know is, I love a challenge and I can't wait to see where we take things from here!