“Will You Come Back Next Year?”

By Dace Koenigsknecht
Economic Restructuring Specialist
Michigan Main Street Center
Michigan State Housing Development Authority

Last week, staff of the Michigan Main Street Center was in Manistee, MI, a beautiful downtown on the shores of Lake Michigan. The event was the Resource Team Visit, a valuable service of consultants (contracted through the National Main Street Center) that come to a selected community for four days of intense observation and recommendation. Each of the Four-Points was represented; and this particular team was composed of:

• Hilary Greenberg, Greenberg Development Services – covering Economic Restructuring
• Scott Day, Urban Development Services – covering Design
• Kathy LaPlante, Program Officer, National Trust Main Street Center – covering Promotion
• Norma Ramirez de Miess, Program Officer, National Trust Main Street Center –Organization
• Laura Krizov, Michigan Main Street Coordinator
• Kelly Larson, Michigan Main Street Architect, SHPO
• Dace Koenigsknecht, Economic Restructuring Specialist
• Jamie Schriner-Hooper, Organization Specialist

What is this valuable service, this Resource Team Visit? The following list is extracted from public presentation given on the final night, and it puts everything into a nutshell:

• 3 – ½ days on-site. Tour and interviews.
• Provide expert advice on how the Manistee Main Street program can best accomplish its current work plan goals and objectives.
• Devise solutions for specific organizational and programming needs.
• Promote the importance of a comprehensive, incremental revitalization process as advocated through the Main Street Four-Point Approach®.
• Provide further training to volunteers and leaders of the Manistee Main Street revitalization effort.
• Promote both local visibility and publicity for the Manistee Main Street Program.

The week began on Sunday with an informal team dinner of introductions and planning. The years of experience around the table translated into great stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly – seen across time and geography. The light-hearted atmosphere would soon give way to business, however.

Each morning dawned sunny and bright, with breakfast at a local coffee shop or restaurant (too early for some of the group). There was a run-through of the daily schedule; interviews, tours, photographs, meals, splitting up and reconvening elsewhere – no synchronized watches though.

The days were full of interviews, whether groups of business owners (as in the photo below), staff from partnering organizations, or the countless invaluable volunteers.

There was a public meet-and-greet (below); an opportunity for the team and local stakeholders to talk more freely about life in Manistee.

Each night consisted of a group debriefing; an aggregation of information from countless sources, a number of random strings that needed to be woven together into useful fabric.

I should mention food…lots of food at local community hotspots, from the coffee shop owned and operated by ‘retirees’ to the new Mexican restaurant built upon (and named for) family.

The vast amounts of information were distilled and distributed to the community through meetings with the committees, the board, and the public. The public presentation was a fast-paced snapshot of Manistee as seen through the eyes of the ‘out-of-towners’. The nitty-gritty came in a session with the board on the final morning, where steps were outlined that would take the Manistee Main Street program to the next level. It was at the end of this highly-productive conversation that a board member asked, regarding the value of the Resource Team Visit, “Will you come back next year…and do this with us again?”

A final, written report will be provided to the community in the near future, and will help guide the Manistee program for the next couple of years.