PUBLIC MEETING SET TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT MAIN STREET

A public meeting to explain and answer questions about the Main Street revitalization process will be held from 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Wednesday at the River City Yacht Club upstairs from Port Cape. A press conference will follow at 12:30 p.m.

Randy Gray, Missouri Main Street coordinator, and Sheri Stuart, a program associate with the national Main Street Center in Washington, D.C., will be in Cape Girardeau for the meeting, said Judith Anne Lang, chairman of a board founded in late 1999 to prepare for the Main Street Program, on Saturday.

Cape Girardeau was named a Main Street community on Friday, and Lang said the board has been scrambling to get the meeting set up on short notice.

Through the Main Street program, Cape Girardeau will receive technical assistance from a national network of individuals with a broad base of experience in downtown revitalization. Comprehensive services will be provided for up to four years.

The Missouri Main Street Program does not offer direct financial grants to the designated communities, but they will receive in excess of $50,000 worth of downtown revitalization materials, on-site consultant services and fund-raising assistance.

The program for Cape Girardeau encompasses an area from Water Street along North to West End and to new Highway 74. It includes the primary downtown business area, the Haarig area, upper Broadway and old St. Vincent's Seminary, site of the proposed river campus of Southeast Missouri State University.

The program will be under the name Old Town Cape Inc. at Cape Girardeau.