BRATTLEBORO — Building a Better Brattleboro (BaBB) has been designated as an accredited National Main Street Program for meeting the commercial district revitalization performance standards set by the National Trust Main Street Center.
Each year, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a privately funded nonprofit organization, and its partners announce the list of accredited Main Street programs that have built strong revitalization organizations and demonstrate their ability in using the Main Street Four-Point Approach methodology for strengthening their local economy and protecting their historic buildings.
“We congratulate this year's nationally accredited Main Street programs for meeting our established performance standards,” said Doug Loescher, director of the National Trust Main Street Center. “Accredited Main Street programs are meeting the challenges of the recession head on and are successfully using a focused, comprehensive revitalization strategy to keep their communities vibrant and sustainable.”
The organization's performance is evaluated annually by the Vermont Downtown Program of the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, which works in partnership with the National Trust Main Street Center to identify the local programs that meet 10 performance standards.
These standards set the benchmarks for measuring an individual Main Street program's application of the Main Street Four-Point Approach to commercial district revitalization. Evaluation criteria determines the communities that are building comprehensive and sustainable revitalization efforts and include standards such as developing a mission, fostering strong public-private partnerships, securing an operating budget, tracking economic progress, and preserving historic buildings.
For more information on the national program accreditation program, visit www.preservationnation.org/main-street/about-main-street/the-programs/national-programs.html.
The mission of Building a Better Brattleboro is to support and nurture the commercial, cultural, residential, and professional environment of the town of Brattleboro with primary emphasis on downtown revitalization. During fiscal year 2011, it helped to secure nearly $127,000 in tax credits and grants for the downtown area.
Other recent accomplishments include the completion of a Downtown Market Study resulting in the awarding of a Rural Business Enterprise Grant by the USDA capitalizing on the information presented. A strategy is currently underway to work with downtown businesses to increase the digital presence of the entirety of downtown Brattleboro.
“We are partnering with downtown businesses to give them the training and resources needed to bring their marketing strategically into the 21st century,” said BaBB Executive Director Andrea Livermore. “There are free and very low-cost tools out there. Our goal is to offer those tools, along with the training to use them, to our downtown businesses to give them increased competitive advantage.
Livermore said that “the economic, social and cultural vitality of a downtown is a key factor in making a community an attractive place to live and work. Healthy downtowns require consistent and creative effort and advocacy to survive in today's economy. Designated downtown organizations [such as BaBB] working through the Vermont Downtown Program fill this role.”