What is the problem being addressed?

Emporia, Kansas was historically an agricultural and manufacturing town. Due to the decline of agricultural prices in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many factories and businesses that depended on agriculture moved out of town, starting the city’s decline. At the same time, jobs created by the construction of a regional power plant drew local workers out of Emporia. Emporia’s downtown vacancy rate eventually reached 30 to 40 percent.

What is their innovative solution?

The city and county governments joined with the Downtown Association and Chamber of Commerce to create a Main Street Program in 1991. The Emporia Main Street Program provides promotion, design, business enhancement, and organization services to current and potential downtown businesses. It also helps to connect businesses to a variety of federal, state, and local funding sources, including zero-interest loan programs from the Kansas Department of Commerce; the privately funded Trusler Foundation; and Network Kansas, a statewide organization established by the Kansas legislature to provide entrepreneurial support, historic preservation tax credits and competitive grant programs, and loan guarantee programs tax-increment financing. The city has also been involved in downtown revitalization efforts. The city partially funds Emporia Main Street (40 percent of its funding comes from the city’s general fund and 60 percent from private sources). The city and Emporia Main Street worked together to create a “code team” in 2005 to help facilitate development approvals. The team brings together code officials, firefighters, engineers, and zoning staff to meet with new or expanding business owners at the business site to clarify requirements expeditiously. The city and Emporia Main Street also worked together to create and adopt downtown design guidelines to promote mixed-use development and reinvestment in downtown Emporia that contributes to the area’s existing historic fabric and character. The design guidelines address the street grid, architectural detailing, construction materials, design principles for adaptive reuse and infill construction, signage, integrating multiple transportation modes into the existing streets, parking design and placement, lighting, street trees, and street furniture.

The city created the Neighborhood Revitalization Plan in 2008, along with a tax rebate program, to encourage improvements to residential and commercial properties in distressed areas. Emporia’s 2008 comprehensive plan includes goals to help create a vibrant downtown, including promoting downtown investment and redevelopment, providing incentives for redevelopment and infill in blighted areas, restoring and preserving the original façades of downtown buildings, improving pedestrian and bicycle connections throughout Emporia, creating a park for downtown and surrounding neighborhoods, and providing a wide range of housing options throughout the city.

In 2011, Emporia established a downtown historic district that gives property owners access to historic tax credits to help with renovation costs.

How can this be applied to Meadville?

This is relevant to meadville in terms of the economic downfall this town had, like meadville experienced in the 1980s. Meadville can utilize its strengths from its assets, history, and the college.