Jackson residents consider uptown's future

Over 40 Jackson residents gathered in the basement of New McKendree Methodist Church on Thursday night as part of an ongoing effort to revitalize uptown Jackson.

The brainstorming session was hosted by the Uptown Jackson Revitalization Organization with the help of not-for-profit organization the Missouri Main Street Connection.

State community development coordinator Keith Winge said the meeting represented the first step toward actualizing the

vision of the Uptown Jackson Revitalization Organization.

"The people who are going to change the uptown district are the people in this room," he said.

Winge gave a short presentation explaining the role his organization has played in other communities in the state, helping to identify attainable goals and streamlining the efforts to effect change.

The Missouri Main Street Connection works with six nationally accredited Main Street communities, including Cape Girardeau, which recently won a Great American Main Street award.

Marla Mills, executive director of Old Town Cape, was also in attendance and said Missouri Main Street Connection has been instrumental in Old Town Cape's successes over the past decade.

"It's given ... a structure. It helps us to be able to manage a comprehensive approach to revitalization," she said. "They help take the learning curve out of it."

Stephen Hoffman, history professor at Southeast Missouri State University and coordinator of the Cape Girardeau Historic Preservation Program, said Missouri Main Street Connection also provides communities with access to national resources.

"[A revitalization project] like this can be a lot like drinking from a firehose," he said.

"It's able to help tailor national information on trends and techniques to help communities figure out what pieces they need. You might have a list of 20 things you want to do, but they help focus on the things that are most important and will make the most impact."

The residents in attendance formulated their own lists of "wildly important goals," which included a wide range of topics.

Wayfinding signage, brochures, search-engine optimization, fundraising, landscaping and media-generating events were identified to be the most important.

Mills said she heard revitalization projects once described as "a 15-year overnight success," which she said is an accurate assessment.

"It's really about generating incremental change."

The next Missouri Main Street Connection event will be a training seminar to be held roughly two months from now, to discuss action planning.

tgraef@semissourian.com

388-3627

Pertinent address:

Jackson, Mo.