MERIDIAN — I spend an awful lot of time talking about the downtown.  One might suggest I’ve occasionally waxed eloquently about the downtown’s history.  I can talk for hours about how a community’s urban core has evolved and changed over time.  It’s not unusual for me to turn virtually any conversation into a diatribe about the significance, vulnerability, potential, and weaknesses of one’s central business district.  It’s almost as if Copernicus be damned, the downtown is the center of the universe.

    Few knowledgeable people would argue that I, and many of my fellow travelers have a passion for the downtown.  I in turn would respond that this passion is an emotional response but at the same time is a rational response as well.  It is a passion that is born from the heart as well as the head.

    Why is downtown special?  Let’s explore that emotional response first.  What are your memories from your youth about your home town’s heart?  If you were one of the fortunate ones who grew up in Meridian, your memories would probably involve shopping downtown, perhaps at Marks Rothenberg, the Meridian Blue Store or Kress’s Five & Dime.  Perhaps you would conjure up a vision of eating the chick steak at the Triangle Restaurant or a hot tamale from a favorite vendor.  Or you might recall taking in a Saturday morning matinee at the Rebel, the Strand, the Royal, the Temple or the Magnolia Star (you still can at the Temple).  All are precious memories, memories of a time of innocence when all things were possible.

    So the downtown is important because we can be nostalgic about it?  Well, as a matter of fact yes.  However, there are a number of equally important and more pragmatic reasons our downtown deserves our interest and public support.  The heart of our community has a huge employment count. The medical community alone employs thousands of people within a few blocks of our three, count them, three major downtown hospitals.  Additional major employers include local government, the financial institutions and the service sector.

    The significance of the downtown is further evidenced by the major private and governmental investment in buildings and infrastructure.  As we were taught in school one must look at return on investment.  How do we benefit from this investment?  That one’s easy, it a case of the downtown being sustained and nurtured to protect the investment and maximize the return be it through sales, a growing tax base or the intrinsic value of a more livable community.

    This soliloquy has provided a peak at what the downtown once was, but what about today?  Today downtown Meridian looks far better than most small city downtowns in our state, region or the entire country.  The downtown greening with street trees, corner plantings and landscaped public space has had a tremendous impact on the appearance of the streetscape.  Street trees have matured over the last twenty-five years when this initiative was started in earnest.

    Downtown is blessed with a huge building stock.  Our inventory of high quality buildings is much greater than one would expect from a community of forty thousand or so folks.  These building of various styles represent reflecting the evolution of our city with examples of the Victorian of late nineteenth century to beaux arts to art deco then to modern and most modern etc. 

    To a great degree this geographically large downtown with its large cache of buildings can be attributed to Meridian’s having been the largest city in the state of Mississippi in the early twentieth century.  Why else would we have the tallest building in the state?  Nevertheless, all is not well.  Many of our downtown buildings are vacant and suffering the ravages of deferred maintenance.  This challenge should, if we do things properly, be viewed as an opportunity not a liability.

    O.K. if that’s where we were and we’ve assessed where we presently are, where is our downtown heading?  Well what do we aspire to, what is that vision we are challenged to make a reality.  I would offer a trendy catch phrase, new urbanism, which has been defined as an urban design movement, which promotes walk able neighborhoods that contain a range of housing  and job types. Does that sound familiar.

    We can create that ideal city center through fostering development in certain niches.  These include food beverage and entertainment, musical tourism, specialty retail.  We must include education with the expansion of the MSU Riley Center to include the college’s school of business, the arts (how about the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Center?) coupled with residential with its requisite support amenities.

    Now we’re making a little progress.  We know where we’ve been, we know where we are today and we even know where we’d like to be.  This begs the most important question, “How do we get there?”  As I frequently harp on, we get there with a plan of course, implemented through a public/private partnership.  This partnership manned by a team of involved committed individuals that is working together to give the dream and vision legs and a body.  It is essential they be girded with tenacity and patience.  Our downtown didn’t decline over night nor will it rise from the ashes over night.

    We have a vehicle in place to carry us to that next level.  It is a tried and true vehicle that has effected downtown revitalization all over the country fostering literally billions of dollars in new investment as well as retaining and creating millions of jobs. I am of course, referring to the main street approach.  Meridian Main Street has been established to make it happen here in Meridian.  It is clearly defined in public policy through our community’s comprehensive plan.  The city’s contracting with Meridian Main Street as its downtown economic develop program evidences that policy.

    This fledgling organization, Meridian Main Street, requires a modest budget to do its work, to operate the program and implement its projects executing it’s defined program of work.  From where must the moneys for this modest budget come?  If we are by definition a public/private partnership the moneys should come from both the business community and local government.   A membership/sponsorship drive kicks off in early September seeking the private support.  Requests for public support have been submitted to both the City of Meridian and Lauderdale County, both of them adopting new budgets prior to the first of October.

    I am convinced we are at a cross roads, a decision point, a nexus if you will and we can either move up to the next level protecting our sunk investment or we can continue our economic decline.  This question may well be answered in the next few weeks.  What do you think?



    (John McClure is the executive director of Meridian Main Street, a not for profit, public/private partnership working in concert with others for the revitalization of downtown Meridian).