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(ambient music) - It's been 17 years since the Laramie Main Street project was formed.

It had one goal in mind, improve Downtown Laramie.

That effort's paid off in many ways and in 2022, the nation noticed.

Laramie is one of just three communities nationwide to win the Great American Main Street Award.

We'll talk about Laramie's Downtown success story.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is "Wyoming Chronicle."

- [Announcer] Funding for this program is made possible in part by, the Wyoming Humanities Council.

Helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities.

Thinkwy.org.

And by the members of the WyomingPBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.

- Trey Sherwood, thanks for being with us today on "Wyoming Chronicle."

Tell us who you are exactly in the Laramie Main Street movement.

- (laughing) So I am the Executive Director of Laramie Main Street.

We are a nonprofit.

And so I have the great pleasure of working collaboratively with a hands-on board of directors, with our businesses, our property owners, our local government, and stakeholders.

So I am the convener and the connector for Downtown.

- So what you're telling me is, this is your job.

- Yes.

- Your job is to improve and develop and coordinate Laramie's main street improvement efforts.

Is that fair to say?

- Yeah, so we like to say we are in the business of community development and revitalization.

So Laramie main street started in 2005, and then I came on and I'm almost at 13 years at the helm.

And it's been amazing to look back and see that slow incremental change that we have been able to impact as an organization.

- One of the reasons that we're here today is because something great happened to Laramie Main Street earlier this year.

(Trey laughing) What was that?

- So we won a Great American Main Street award and that is like the Oscars of downtown development work.

So we were recognized by our peers and National Main Street, and we are the third Wyoming community to receive that award.

So I believe per capita, Wyoming has the most amount of Great American Main Street Award winners.

- There were only three last year nationwide, is that right?

- Yes, three each year.

- And Laramie's is the only one west of the Mississippi to get it.

- Yes, yes.

- So it's not just, if you do these four things, you'll be named this like a thousand other places to- - Right.

- This is something that there's no guarantee that you'd ever get it.

And getting it is a major deal as evidenced by the time that's been spent on it.

- Yeah, so when we were working on our application, we pulled past board members, past staff members together to reflect on our accomplishments.

We pulled data from 2005, so number of private dollars invested downtown, public dollars, volunteer hours, number of new businesses, and track all of that.

And so to be able to go back to 2005 and realize we've had over a hundred net new businesses open- - Is that right?

- Downtown in the district, Main Street work is a lot about head and heart.

And so that application was gathering the story that why we're successful and it's about the people, and then the heart, or the head part is the data.

Looking back and saying, how much has been invested?

And how many new entrepreneurs and new jobs?

And so it took us a few months to even put our application together.

- What does Great American Main Street want to see in?

- They want to see a long term vision, an incremental approach.

They wanna see the community engaged and have buy-in in the program.

They wanna see a holistic methodology.

So not just economic development, but also a focus on historic preservation and public spaces.

So like the Laramie Mural Project, they want to see that there are events that draw people in and there's opportunities for people to make memories in relation to their time downtown.

And they want to see that you have local government support.

So not putting all of your eggs in one basket and saying, "We're really good at having festivals," but we don't take care of the needs of our businesses.

"Or We're really good at taking care of the maintenance on our buildings," but our sidewalks are cracking.

So again, that holistic approach to how you take care of a community and revitalize the space is what they're looking at.

- We were here a few years ago with "Wyoming Chronicle," specifically looking at the murals project.

And that is now an important part of what's happened in Laramie Main Street and Downtown Laramie revitalization.

But it's not everything, there's more to it than that.

- The murals have evolved from an opportunity for us to support our artists and grow our creative economy and have a visual representation of our unique assets, to now what is the Laramie Public Art Coalition.

So beyond just murals, we're doing things like artist design parklets and artist design public spaces.

Working to take empty lots and give them to artists to renew those spaces.

And so it's moved from, murals are amazing, flat 2D work to more 3D work, and our artists being more integrated in our strategies.

- Laramie's a university town, there's an art department, there are students here, there are professors here, there's a museum here.

- Yes.

- Oftentimes I think people might get the impression at least that the typical Wyoming business person and the typical Wyoming artist who wants to paint a wall or occupy, develop a small vacant space, might not be brothers or sisters in arms.

Is that part of what you found, or certainly what you were trying to avoid, I presume?

- Starting the Laramie Mural Project, one of our founding values was that we pay our artists, our artists are entrepreneurs.

The same way you would pay your plumber, the person who fixes your car or draws up your house plans.

That they are professionals and we need to treat them as such.

And so it was really important for us to focus again on that creative economy and the things that the business owners and the artists did have in common in terms of learning how to sell, learning how to manage your time, learning how to value your time, learning how to write up a proposal or go after a new client.

And so we found that there's more synergy in those two things than there are differences.

- If I were a Laramie business person 10 years ago and you came to me and said, "We are trying to do this, we think we could possibly get this recognition or do the things that could lead to it for the good of the community."

Is there a bare minimum that you wanted a business to do?

And not every business is gonna put a mural out.

- Oh right, yeah.

- What's something that as a small business person, you might have said to me, "Could you at least do this?"

- So the bare minimum I expect of our business owners knowing it as a two-way street is to let me know what they need.

That is, in Wyoming, we're so tenaciously stubborn and individualistic that sometimes we struggle in silence.

And so building that trust with those entrepreneurs and saying, it is okay for you to open up and be vulnerable with me and say I'm struggling with QuickBooks or I'm struggling to negotiate my lease agreement.

It is our job, my job as the main street director to get the businesses the resources they need.

So it doesn't mean I have to be the expert in everything, but I have to know where I can go on campus or to the business council, to the Wyoming Women's Business Center to find that tool that that business owner needs.

So the minimum that I want them to do when they interact with us is ask for help.

- Someone might've expect you to say, "Well, at the very minimum we wanted to put up a cute address number or a paint the mailbox or something."

But it's not necessarily that.

- No, I mean, visual merchandising is very important.

We know that 70% of new customers in sales actually come from the way your storefront looks.

And is it inviting?

So that goes back to the built environment.

But a business may not know how to set up their storefront in a way that's visually engaging.

So again, that goes back to ask for help and we will- - [Steve] We think that they couldn't afford it or-.

- Yes, exactly.

- Or they don't know who to turn to to help all those things.

- Exactly.

- Because you walk the street here and it's just a visually stimulating mixture of stuff.

- (laughing) Oh, and again, it's always ongoing, right?

The historic building requires a lot of maintenance.

- Sure.

- And so going back to that relationship with our business owners, it's up to us to listen to their needs.

So I may have ideas, but at the end of the day, the work's really gonna get done if I am supporting the need of the business.

- So it's the opposite of what I suggested earlier.

Could you at least put up these horseshoe over 'cause everybody's gonna be doing that.

So instead it's, "Have you always wanted to do something?

It's okay to tell me, and maybe we can get you."

- Or an invitation to always have a seat at the table.

Would you like to participate?

Would this benefit you?

What do you need?

- [Steve] Where are you from originally?

- So my dad was in the Air Force, so I like to say I'm from a little bit of everywhere and what is the cliche saying like, I got here as quick as I could.

- Where'd you graduate high school?

- I split high school time between Edwards Air Force Base, California and Atlanta, Georgia.

But I got here and my husband is sixth-generation Wyoming height.

And so when we met and he proposed, he said, "Would you please consider taking my last name?"

And I said, "Yes, that is social capital that I would like to leverage."

(laughing).

- Good, that's a good way to look at it.

You did it all for love and some social capital.

Does a little girl on military bases dream of revitalizing main streets one day?

What brings a person to this kind of work?

- So I, as most Main Street directors will tell you, fell into the work.

So my background is actually in history.

My master's degree is in Public History and Museum Studies.

And so I came to Laramie to be the curator out at the Wyoming Territorial Prison when they became a state historic site.

So that was in 2004.

But I saw a need for more community engagement.

So any institution, whether you're for-profit business, non-profit business, at the end of the day you need to be mindful of what your consumer wants or what your community wants.

And there was a disconnect working in Laramie, but taking direction from bureaucrats and Cheyenne.

And so I just kept feeling and seeing this disconnect.

And so I started looking for volunteer opportunities in the community where I could feel more connected to place.

And I stumbled across an opportunity to be a volunteer grant writer with Laramie Main Street.

I did that for about two months, and then the director got engaged and moved (laughing).

And so then there was an opening.

- Things happened.

(Trey laughing) Who thought of Laramie Main Street?

What happened that it didn't exist, and then it did.

- There was a lot of false starts or a lot of incomplete starts.

So in the 80s we had a downtown development authority, in the 90s that turned into more of a merchant's association and they were focused on one of what should be many holistic approaches to revitalization.

So in the early 2000s, the City said, we want to apply.

This is when Governor Dave Freudenthal was in office.

We want to apply, we wanna be an inaugural Main Street community in Wyoming, and try this out.

So there was a application, there was a business inventory, you had to show buy-in from your community.

So it was pretty extensive process.

And at that time, what was left of our downtown development authority and our merchants association and the city all got together to work on this application.

So eventually all of these organizations came together under what is the Laramie Main Street umbrella, and here we are.

- So it's fair to say, or is it fair to say that one of the drivers that got the forces together was the idea and then not that there's a thing wrong with it, that Laramie could get this award one day, or get this recognition and if we can get there, it's because we did all these things that would be good for the community?

Or is that how it was approached?

- No, there was never a conversation about what is the prize at the end?

What is the benchmark we're gonna go for?

It was, we need a philosophy and a methodology that makes sense for our community.

We need something that we can customize, that we can scale, and we can bring all these entities together to create a shared vision and move in the same direction.

So I think that's the power of the Main Street Movement is something that pulls everybody, all the stakeholders together.

I'm an overachiever, I'm very stubborn.

There are projects that we haven't yet completed.

And so I did not even want to apply- - [Steve] No kidding.

- until some of these big things got done.

We are going to see a complete reconstruction of our third street, our main street through town.

But because of COVID and other things that got delayed until 2025.

And my board said, we don't wanna wait.

Most communities have to apply multiple times.

So they said, let's just go ahead and start the process and see what happens.

And so it's very rare that a community gets it on its first go around, but my board had to push me to say, "Let's start."

And I was like, "We're not done."

And really you're never done.

So even with this pinnacle, even with this recognition, our work is not yet done, and it will continue to evolve based on the needs of the community and our businesses.

- Did you find that there are some sort of competitive interests sometimes and you'd think that maybe the different groups would see the value in doing this, but they don't always, and maybe that's what facilitator and such as yourself can help overcome?

- I think people will tend to work in silos.

We get comfortable, and we have an idea and maybe we only see that little pathway to the idea.

And so again, the idea of having a connector and having a board to have a bigger picture vision, inviting those groups that were in their different silos to the table and talking about shared vision and commonality and goals and how we could help each other.

It really did take something to rally behind.

And I don't think it was competitive in a nasty way by any means.

I think it was more confusion over where goals overlapped and there needed to be a space to get all that out on the table.

- We're here on a, happens to be the day of a football game.

Cowboys Conference Opener tonight.

Interestingly on a Friday night instead of Saturday.

And I would say the Downtown District is buzzing, wouldn't you?

- Yes.

- This must be great for you to see.

And it's not the first time you've seen it, but here we are in the fall some months out from the award, a time when people are coming to Laramie typically anyway, and there's a lot of people seeing this for the first time.

What impression are you wanting them to get?

What are you proud that they're seeing?

- So I hope that there's a deepening sense of pride in place, in community, but also an inspiration to say, "Maybe I can take some of these elements back to my own community, my own little Wyoming hometown."

- I'm hoping or wondering if people from other communities, and maybe it's just a block, a city block that they're on or a neighborhood.

Are hearing you and saying, "What could I do?

- Yes.

- Where I live to do this.

One of the several events happening in Laramie today was a bigger than Laramie conference on your topic.

What was that?

- So we were focused on community transformation strategies and it was taught by National Main Street.

So again that very strategic approach, but scalable approach.

And so members from the Glenrock community joined us.

We have interest from Afton and Cookville in like how do we do this main street work?

- These are not big towns.

- One of our instructors today was from Chicago.

And so they look at it from a neighborhood scale.

So I think there's 77, over 70 of these neighborhood programs in Chicago that use this main street philosophy to revitalize their neighborhoods.

And so I think that's what makes me so excited to share with others.

The success of our work is that it is scalable, it is customizable, it's something you can do with your city, your chamber, your tourism board, whatever assets you've already got in your community, just getting people around and focused.

- When you drive through Wyoming as we do a lot, these little towns are pretty cool, aren't they?

- Yes, a lot of character.

- Yeah, and look, I'm sure you as the overachieving high energy person that you are.

You probably go through often and think, "Boy, give me six months here or let me talk to, get a group of people together and I could get you started toward making it, just improving it as a place to live."

- Yeah, I see potential in every single one of our communities.

I tend to be that shopper that's like, why did you start your business?

What successes have you had?

And even sharing the resources again from the Wyoming Business Council or UW with business owners that I might run into in Riverton who are like, "Man, I'm really struggling with this.

Well did you know there was this resource?

Again, there's just this beautiful network and every community has potential if they stay true to themselves, and be the best versions of who they want to be.

Be unique, celebrate your assets, and bring people together.

- So there's something that Cokeville can learn from that, instructor, in Chicago.

- Yes, absolutely.

- If there was a checklist or a list of highlights or things that to the visitor to Laramie who hasn't been here for a while, is gonna see.

- [Trey] An experience?

- An experience that weren't here 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 30 years ago.

- Our restaurant scene continues to blossom.

In the spring we had five of our downtown restaurants featured on The Food Network with Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

And so I encourage people to check that out.

They did a great job of interviewing those entrepreneurs and capturing their passion, but also those dishes that are really popular.

And if you get out and walk around, you'll see that we have transformed a lot of our public spaces.

So there are empty lots that used to be just full of weeds and closed by a chain link fenced.

And we've taken those down and cleaned them up and now they're sitting areas for people to grab a drink or grab food and socialize.

You'll also notice that we have a grocery store downtown now.

So Big Hollow Food Co-op is something that we're really proud of because they focus on carrying local and regional foods and specialty items.

But it's been an extension of the success of our farmer's market.

- That is a great way I've observed to bring different kinds of people together, from everything is politicized now, it seems like.

But have you seen, you go to a farmer's market, and you'll see side by side people that don't vote for the same candidate, but they agree on this and they're cooperating.

- Yeah, I wanna support local.

One of our strategies is a focus on what we call third space.

So quick definition is like your first space is your home, your second space is your office, and your third space is where you go for community.

And so it might be a bar or coffee shop or a park, but we think our farmers' market fulfills that as well.

It's a place where people gather and share ideas and challenge concepts and reconnect.

And so food oftentimes is that connector that brings us together as well as an inviting space.

- So I imagine when you have a meeting of your board or of a community group talking about this, it wouldn't have worked the way it worked if you didn't have a pretty diverse group of people involved.

- It is the board's directive to keep that bigger picture vision in mind, but also to roll up their sleeves and be in community and do the work.

And so I have members from the university, from downtown, from the LGBT community, from our younger populations.

Again, Laramie's median age is 28.

So we wanna make sure that those voices are at the table, and we're always thinking about ways that we can reach out and collaborate with new partners.

And let that diversity of voices drive the vision and the execution of our strategies.

- So somebody in anywhere Wyoming wants to get started in something like what you're doing.

What would be a first couple of things for them to do?

So the good news is there's actually a structural approach to getting started.

So anybody interested in using the Main Street philosophy can reach out to the Wyoming Business Council.

And there's a exploratory process where people come to the community, they talk about Main Street, they talk about where you're at and what you wanna get out of movement or a program.

There's an application process.

There are mentoring, oftentimes I go and help with the onboarding or help with those site visits.

And so right now there are 18 Main Street communities in Wyoming.

They're all at different phases.

We have like a tiered approach.

So you can start from all volunteer, part-time staff to go to full-time staff and full accreditation, and yeah, there's just this really great support system so that you feel less alone in the work.

- I feel that people might think, well, I could never afford that.

And what you've found is there's money to be had.

There can be.

- There can be, "We say we're small but mighty.

We are very scrappy and creative with our financial resources.

- Sure.

which is what it takes.

- Yeah, so again, it's more, I think about community vision and engagement and human capital and yes, you do need money, but this our successes down here haven't been reliant on always having the money to do it, but being creative and finding other ways.

- Having a working board that you're talking about, you say the Laramie Main Street began 2005, we're coming up on 20 years.

A lot of good community projects in Wyoming towns I know start and they flourish because a couple of people are really pushing it, and for whatever reason, and we can all think of the different reasons.

When those people leave the scene, or whatever happens, the thing sometimes whether its on the blanks.

So having the working board, the diverse group, the different age groups, the different walks of life is a key to sustaining it.

- Yes.

- You won't be the executive director here forever.

But you want someone to.

- Be to continue on, right?

So again, the importance of having both a planning document that captures that long term vision based on community desire, but also this idea of an onboarding process for new volunteers.

So somebody might pour beer at the Brew Fest and that's their first exposure to the organization.

And then we might invite them to be on the planning committee for the farmer's market, and then on a committee and then on a board.

And so we have a leadership pathway that we're mindful of as we're bringing people in, we wanna meet people where they're at, but we also wanna encourage them to develop their leadership skills.

- And you speak from experience because this is the path you took to it.

- Yep, started as a volunteer.

- And here you are.

A memorable line from the movie, "The Social Network," which is about Mark Zuckerberg founding Facebook.

And one of the things he says in it, Facebook has never finished, we're like fashion.

Fashion is never finished.

You've won the award, the GAMSA, Great American Main Street Award.

So now, sit back with your feet on your desk or is there more to do?

- We will continue to roll up our sleeves and work and hustle for our community.

And again, because our Main Street movement is grounded in the needs of the community, one of the things that we're really excited to begin to tackle is the need for housing.

So we know that not only Laramie, but every one of our Wyoming communities is facing a housing shortage.

- Sure.

- Whether that's for seniors, workforce, affordability, and one of the things that a downtown has is space and oftentimes underutilized or empty space.

So we took on the role this year of becoming developer, and today our first tenant is moving into- - [Steve] No kidding.

One of three apartments that we've built out.

So we have tested the market and created a methodology to follow and we wanna go teach that to other building owners downtown, and inspire people and walk alongside the development of more downtown housing to fill that need.

- You seem to be a person who finds reason to get up in the morning.

- Yeah, I'm not a morning person, but yeah, I love what I do.

I love this job, every day is different.

Every day is a new challenge, new opportunity and I love lifting up our entrepreneurs.

There's nothing more rewarding than somebody walking in the office saying, "It's my dream to open a deli."

and then walk them through that process and be with them on opening day and celebrate that they made their dream a reality.

And that I got to support that pathway.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is made possible in part by, the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities.

Thinkwy.org, and by the members of the WyomingPBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.