Shelby County Looks to Revitalize its Towns
By Mark Requet
Shelby County Economic Development Director Lisa Skelton is excited for the possibility of a revitalization project for four towns in Shelby County. She is working to get Shelbyville, Shelbina, Bethel and Clarence all on board to be a part of the Missouri Main Street Project, a program that will be a brand-new pilot program for the county.
Skelton attended a meeting last October in Brookfield that kick started the idea of doing a county wide project.
“What I wanted was to have some sort of revitalization along Highway 15 because Highway 15, to me, is Shelby County’s main street. That’s what I was looking for and I stumbled upon this,” said Skelton, referring to the Missouri Main Street Project. “But after I was listening, I recognized that this is for towns. I thought ‘our towns can do this’ because I’ve seen the different sizes of towns that have been doing this. Then I found out the price and I thought, ‘none of our towns can do this,’ but our county can do it together.”
Skelton asked if there was a county wide approach and they said no, but they were interested in piloting a program, they just didn’t know what it would look like.
“I said when you figure it out, give me a call because Shelby County would be interested,” Skelton stated.
She attended a few more meetings over time and reached out to Ben White with Missouri Main Street Project and inquired to see if they had thought anymore about a county wide approach. White said they hadn’t really moved forward with it because they didn’t know of a county that would be interested.
“I said Shelby County would be interested and so we sat down and had several conversations about what a county wide approach would look like,” said Skelton. “I chose the four communities of Shelbyville, Shelbina, Bethel, and Clarence as the focal points for this because most of them are on 15, and Clarence is doing so much with their downtown it stands to reason to include them, and they’re putting a lot of thought and planning into what the next steps would look like for downtown Clarence.”
The program is intended to be a revitalization of the downtowns of small communities and with the countywide approach, while they’re revitalizing these four communities, Skelton said it’s bringing people and opportunities to other communities that may not be as large as the ones that would be active.
According to information Skelton provided, it says the Main Street Program offers a blueprint for bringing downtowns back to life. It applies a historic preservation-based, volunteer driven economic development strategy to powerful grassroots organizations, which yields impressive results in communities of all sizes and in all places. Downtowns in small communities and urban commercial districts have used this cost-effective approach to attract new investment to their districts while reusing the existing building stock and amenities.
“When I get all the agreements from the city councils that are involved, I will send the application to the Missouri Main Street Project and we will then apply for grants to help us pay our portion of the project,” stated Skelton. “Missouri Main Street Project is a two-year program where the organization will be coming in with town hall meetings, organizational visits, survey work and data collection, specialized technical service by phone, training and reference materials, networking, and branding for your particular Main Street Project.”
The Missouri Main Street Project has a Community Empowerment Grant Program. It is a 70/30 relationship where they give 70 percent in services, which rounds out to about $45,000 worth of services that they offer, according to Skelton. The community picks up the 30 percent which she said will be covered by grants.
“The first step will be for them to come to Shelby County and see what we have. They will visit all four communities and then they will bring back recommendations of the things that they see,” said Skelton. “They’re going to take building inventories and look at our facades, among other things.”
She said they don’t tell you what you have to do, but they give options of what they think would work and you get to choose what you’re going to focus on. Whether its facade upgrades to buildings, painting murals, building a pocket park, or other ideas to create attraction. Skelton added that if a business owner can’t afford what they are suggesting, then she will look into grants to help the business owner get what they need.
Skelton said a committee with equal representation from each community will be appointed and will be doing the work. Each city may have their own committee to decide what area they want to focus on in their respective city.
What can businesses and residents do to help?
“Be a part of those committees. Come to the town hall meetings when they are scheduled and we announce them. Be positive about what your community can do for itself because that’s what it’s going to be. It’s going to be the community that is going to choose the program that they want to work on, and it will be community members who will be doing that,” stated Skelton. “It’s not going to be some big corporation coming in here and telling us to tear down a building, and they won’t say you have to do this or we’re not going to help you.”
Skelton said that Shelby County was the only spot along Highway 36 across the entire state that didn’t have an active Main Street Project.
“It’s going to be a lot of our county pulling together to make things better in our communities by revitalizing the places we love. We have an opportunity as a community to improve Shelby County and we have the opportunity to have experts come in, offer us suggestions and direction, support, and all those things we need to do this,” said Skelton. “I’ve not heard of any community that has said, ‘Oh, man I wish we had never done that!’ I’m very excited about it.”
Shelby County, when the program gets up and running, will be the first and only Missouri Main Street Connection Program in the state of Missouri for a county.
