Supporting our Downtowns
Posted on August 18, 2008 by Randy Maiers
Thanks to the outstanding efforts of several other partnering organizations, and the flexibility provided by our unrestricted endowment funds, the Community Foundation is making great progress in advancing greater collaboration and the leveraging of resources to support the revitalization of our unique downtowns.
When donors choose to make lifetime gifts to benefit their community through the Community Foundation, the most powerful tool available is the “unrestricted endowment fund.” The term “unrestricted” applies to the type of programs, projects and organizations that the Community Foundation can support with the available earnings from a particular fund. While some donors choose to select a particular area of interest, say the arts, other donors (Wismer, Giese, Willson, Acheson) establish unrestricted funds which allow the Community Foundation to use its judgement as times change to leverage available funds.
Our latest and largest initiative will be the new pilot program for “Blue Water Mainstreets” which will be a joint initiative of: St. Clair County, Marine City Chamber of Commerce, City of St. Clair DDA and St. Clair Chamber of Commerce, Port Huron DDA, Blue Water Area Chamber of Commerce, Blue Water Convention & Visitor’s Bureau and the Lexington DDA. As the program grows, partners in other downtowns will be added as well.
The Blue Water Mainstreets pilot program is similar to the the Oakland County Mainstreets program, which is the only county-wide program in Michigan which provides support to all downtowns within a county. Initially the Blue Water Mainstreets program will focus on year-round tourisim - Discover the Blue in the summer and agri-tourism in the fall/winter—- and will also provide support for existing small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Through the financial support of St. Clair County we will be hiring a new full-time “Small Business Concierge” who will have regular office ours in each participating downtown. The primary responsibility of this new “Concierge” will be to serve as the small business expert and resource in each downtown by working with existing organizations such as local chambers of commerce or downtown development authorities.
In these challenging economic times, none of our downtowns have the financial ability to have their own full-time small business professional on staff. However, this pilot program will leverage what resources are available and provide each downtown with a professional staff person at their disposal to assist their existing and new small business ventures.
