Now it’s time for “A Moment with Main Street Marshfield.”
I spoke with Carter Howe, Executive Director of Main Street Marshfield and he discussed what they’ve been up to and what’s coming up.
This has been “A Moment with Main Street Marshfield.”
Riley: “What has Main Street Marshfield been up to?”
Carter: “Yeah, we’ve been doing a lot of really awesome things here at Main Street Marshfield. Our event seasons are usually around the holidays and then in summer, so this is kind of our off season in terms of that. But it doesn’t mean we don’t have things going on, so this is where we we do take care of a lot of our housekeeping items and stuff like that.”
“But one thing we did last month is we hosted our Annual Downtown Awards, which is where we celebrate some of our local businesses downtown. We had over 100 people at the event, and it was a huge success. It was over at the Second Street Community Center.”
“I won’t go through all the awards, because we had so many to give out and so many businesses to celebrate. But a couple examples is Pure Glamour Nail Salon received an award for outstanding business renovation. If you’ve ever been on Fifth Street, kind of by the State Farm there the old podiatrist building. It was old. It was definitely in need of a facelift.”
“And the nail salon came in, and they really just did an amazing job renovating this building. Inside and out. It’s just gorgeous. You’ll drive by it now, and you just can’t miss it. And so we really wanted to celebrate that. So that was one of the awards we gave out.”
“We also celebrated our partnership of the year with Forte Opening Solutions, one of our local manufacturing partners in Marshfield. They’ve done a lot of work for us in terms of financial and in-kind sponsorship. And we’re a nonprofit organizations, so we really rely on our corporate partners to help move our organization forward.”
“And Forte has been outstanding in terms of their support this year and so we’re really excited to continue that partnership together in the future. So, that’s kind of what we’ve been doing. We’ve been having our awards banquet. We’ve been kind of taking care of our housekeeping things and keeping up with our usual business visits and various other tasks that we have on our plate.”
Riley: “So what’s on the horizon?”
Carter: “Yeah, we have a lot of good things we’re looking forward to. We are starting our planning for Hub City Days in July. I know that July seems like a very far, very far in the future, but you know, we do got to start planning now if we want to make it happen.”
“So, we are starting to have those initial meetings and get our vendors set up and we’re looking forward to a really successful event here in the summer. So, looking forward to getting the ball rolling on that.”
“We also have a few small things planned between July and now, once the snow melts, if you can believe the snow will actually melt, but we’re going to start doing some cleanup downtown. So, some of the trash that’s been left in the fall and things starts to show, so we’ll pick that up. We’ll start doing some beautification efforts downtown during the spring, just so it’s all nice for summer.”
“Another thing we’re also doing is we’re working with our businesses to actually do a couple town halls here between now and summer. It’s a really good opportunity for us to hear feedback and talk a little bit about issues that might be going on, or even things that are going good, or it’s a great communication opportunity with our local businesses.”
“So, I know we want to do one on liquor licenses. I know that we’re working to figure out one on kind of snow removals and having conversations with the city and so we’re looking forward to having some of those kind of open forum sort of events with our business owners, so we can continue to stay in contact and address their needs as we go into summer.”
Riley: “Anything else you’d like to highlight?”
Carter: “We’re continuing to do the work, right? We’re really excited for this year. I think we have a lot of good things lined up. We are excited with our partnerships between the city, with the Chamber of Commerce, with Visit Marshfield, our tourist organization, and we’re looking forward to having further conversations on how we can promote economic development in downtown Marshfield. I think we’re on a really good track here and I’m looking forward to the progress.”
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