PDF: MainStreet Cleveland remarks
CLEVELAND, Tenn. — MainStreet Cleveland marked 20 years as an organization Monday.
The monthly membership meeting took place as work progressed on a nearby new park, one of the latest MainStreet projects.
“This is a major milestone for our community,” Executive Director Sharon Marr said. “Twenty years is a significant amount of time.”
Kimberly Nyberg, head of Tennessee MainStreet, was to have been the guest speaker. She was ill, however, and e-mailed her remarks.
In those remarks, she praised the work of the state’s 23 MainStreet programs and their volunteers during an economically challenging year.
“Despite the dips in our economy, Tennessee MainStreet reinvestment statistics are sound,” she said. “This year we saw over 90 million of public and private dollars reinvested in our 23 Main Street communities.”
The year’s statistics include more than 100,000 volunteer hours by MainStreet organizations, she said.
Doug Cawood, local president, said that many items on the downtown master plan have been checked off since it was created in 2003.
“Nothing about downtown redevelopment is fast,” Mr. Cawood said Monday. “It is slow work.”
But MainStreet Cleveland has moved faster in the past seven years than some similar organizations, he said.
Among its accomplishments so far are the creation of downtown festivals, streetscapes, Broad Street improvements and courthouse block landscaping, officials said.
The two newest projects are nearing completion in early summer. With a $15,000 grant, the local organization is installing signs at major gateways to downtown and antique-looking traffic signs in the downtown historic district.
By late June a new park, First Street Square will be finished, Mrs. Marr said, allowing the downtown market that began last summer to move there from the Museum Center at Five Points.
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