Blissfield Celebrates Selection as Main Street Community

Blissfield Village President Jae Guetschow said he hopes the village’s new status a “select-level” member of the Michigan Main Street program will help transform downtown. Guetschow made the remarks Wednesday afternoon as the village officially announced its selection in the Main Street program.

Guetschow said he hopes to see changes that will help the downtown be more appealing to local residents.

“For a period of time we’ve been advertising and courting outsiders to come in and spend their money here but we really need to have a good blend of visitors as well as residents,” Guetschow said.

Guetschow said that downtown centers, such as Blissfield’s, are more in demand after 60 years of sprawl and running away from urban centers.

“After 60 years of flight from the cities, developers are now trying to reinvent small town America. If you look at Mayberry, not too far across the border, that’s exactly what they tried to design, is a small town. We don’t need reinventing here in Blissfield,” Guetschow said. “We already have the foundation that Hervey Bliss and the founders of Blissfield started back in the 1800s to build on. What we’re trying to do is bring back that whole concept of what a downtown in a community is all about.”

Guetschow made the remarks after about 30 people gathered in the mini-park, where they were treated to free hot dogs, soda and water.

Governor Jennifer Granholm announced Blissfield’s selection for the program June 23. Blissfield has participated in the Main Street Program for more than a year to test the waters. Volunteers, members of the DDA board, and village officials visited Main Street Program communities all over the state for training seminars. Often times, the volunteers came home energized and they encouraged the DDA and Village Council to apply for select-level membership in the program, which aims to encourage community economic development through:

• Organization: getting everyone working toward the same goal and assembling the appropriate human and financial resources to implement a Main Street revitalization program.
• Promotion:selling a positive image of the commercial district and encouraging consumers and investors to live, work, shop, play and invest in the Main Street district.
• Design:getting the downtown into top physical shape. Capitalizing on its best assets, such as historic buildings and pedestrian-oriented streets, is just part of the story.
• Economic restructuring:strengthening a community's existing economic assets while expanding and diversifying its economic base.

More than 30 people volunteered time and energy to the Main Street application. According to Main Street director Joe Borgstrom, the work has just begun. Borgstrom had this to say when he was asked what residents will first notice now that Blissfield is an official Main Street community.

“They are going to see a lot more calls for volunteers, first and foremost. It’s not one manager, although part of the program involves hiring a manager. There will be an army of volunteers needed to do this. The first thing they’ll notice is that they will be asked to help,” Borgstrom said.

The second thing people will see is an organizational process taking place, he said.

“Before we move the troops into the field we’ve got to know what they’re going to do,” he said. “We’re going to spend the next several months going through board training and doing a baseline assessment this fall, where we’ll come in with a National Main Street expert as well as a member of our staff, and take a look at where some of the low hanging fruits are going to be, so that come spring, we can start looking at some of the physical improvements needed downtown.”

Borgstrom said that the Main Street Program brings results. He estimated that, on average, Main Street communities, in total, see about $750,000 to $1 million each year in private investment.

“Even in a down economy, we’re seeing significant investments in our downtowns,” he said. “They’ve done really well weathering the storm because they’ve adopted a coordinated approach to their downtowns. It’s not everyone for themselves.”

Borgstrom likes what he’s seen from Blissfield.

“We think Blissfield has tremendous potential. You’ve got great, historic features to the buildings. Some need to be uncovered. There’s some maintenance that hasn’t been done or that should be done, or done differently, to be appropriate. But there’s a lot of good potential here,” he said. “There’s a lot of good before. We can’t wait to see the afters.”