Main Street Makeover Changing the World One Community at a Time
Introduction
Main Street Makeover is a reality television series that follows one
community over a period of years as they grapple with small town problems like
lack of jobs, exodus of young people and shrinking town revenues.
But
all stakeholders in town—businesses on main street and industry elsewhere in
the community, homeowners, town mayor and councilors as well as town staff,
volunteers, farmers, educators, artists, realtors, developers, constructors, entrepreneurs
and would-be entrepreneurs—have come together in a townhall meeting to launch a
program of renovation and redemption.
Their
goal is to reanimate their community by reinventing their town using new
techniques that may include some or all of the following:
-making
over of main street by repopulating it, first, with more residents attracted to
a walkable place and, second, more enterprises
-applying
neo-urbanist principles thereby creating a mixed use place with both greater
density and intensity of use
-embracing
the grow local movement, farm gate marketing, farm to table sales channel
-developing
agritainment uses to build farm incomes as well as building a farm stay network
-adding
leisure, entertainment and sports uses to existing buildings
-creating
new festivals/attractions or building on existing festivals/attractions to
boost tourism
-adding
new summer or winter camp programs
-reanimating
old industrial parks by allowing accessory residential uses as well as
restaurants, stores and other uses
-building
an elder-friendly, mixed generation community
-creating
a group of mentors and coaches to teach/assist entrepreneurs and would-be
entrepreneurs thereby helping residents create as many personal businesses (and/or
social enterprises) for life as possible
-embracing
green-for-real principles
-adding
affordable housing including tiny houses, granny flats, coach house, garden
suites, mobile prefabricated homes
-finding
new ways to make it easier for first time homebuyers and others to become
owners
-helping
entrepreneurs own their own commercial real estate as well
-reanimating
existing parks by introducing more commercial services, leisure activities as
well as land leases for residential use
-adding
learning opportunities throughout the town
-teaching
young people how to self capitalize new enterprises
-curating
sources of finance and market channels for new entrepreneurs
-rebuilding
the town’s brand via both a real world makeover of the town’s streets, parks
and facilities as well as the town’s social media presence so that every
business and every attraction in the town shows up on Google maps and elsewhere
in the social media universe
-twinning
with a southern community
-engaging
real estate professionals, developers, builders and investors as well as
ordinary citizens to create real estate portfolios with higher than average
returns using some of these animation techniques.
Objectives
The objectives of the program are:
A.
to prove that
reanimation works
B.
to find out
what works and what doesn’t
C.
to build a new
generation of owners of businesses and real estate with higher than average
returns
D.
to apply the
scientific method by repeating the experiment in other communities and in other
countries, hopefully producing the same or better results.
E.
to entertain a
generation of television viewers already interested in real estate investing
and development as well as entrepreneurship, social enterprise, arts, culture,
branding, farming, agritainment, tourism and environmentalism while becoming
ever more self reliant.
Your Community
If your community would like to participate, can you please answer these
15 questions:
1. are your mayor and councilors and county
interested in economic development?
2. is your community supportive of new initiatives
to bring about more economic development?
3. would you characterize your town and its people
as open to new ideas?
4. what are the six things about your community
visitors should know about before visiting?
5. what are the top economic generators in your
town right now?
6. how many businesses including home-based
businesses are active in your community right now?
7. how many people live in your community?
8. how many people live within 60-minutes of your
town?
9. what is the largest city nearest to your town?
10. what kind of tertiary education is
available either in your town or nearby?
11. can you name the three most famous
sons or daughter of your town, and what did they do to get that reputation?
12. what is the demographic makeup of
your town—male/female, age brackets, and what is the average income in your
town?
13. what is the wackiest thing to ever
happen or most successful event ever hosted in your hometown?
14. has your population increased or
decreased over the past ten years?
15. what would you say are the greatest
challenges for your town to overcome in the next decade?
Send your answers
along with 6 photos of your community highlighting what you think is important
to:
Main Street Makeover
c/-
Bruce M Firestone, PhD
Ottawa
Senators founder and Century 21 Explorer Realty broker
Let’s
change the world, one community at a time.
Kindest
regards,
Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (Civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD
ROYAL LePAGE Performance Realty broker, Ottawa Senators
founder
613.422.6757 x 250
@ProfBruce
making impossible possible
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