Atlanta native Mary Means recalls visiting Fiske’s toy store at Peachtree and 10th Street during her youth. Her mom would park her and her siblings at the store while she went shopping next door. Mr. Fiske, a Captain Kangaroo-esque sort of fellow, would engage his young customers in detailed conversations about how to allocate the 75 cents they had been given to spend in his store.
This was years before repeal of the fair trade laws designed to protect small town businesses would kill Main Street corridors across the country. And it was decades before Means would play a vital role in bringing those Main Streets back.
Like many Atlanta residents, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about community during these pandemic years. What does it look like? What should it look like? How do I create space for myself and my family in my community?
Main Streets have always carried a certain nostalgia, but much of that yearning is for a time when Main Streets were the sole economic engines of a community.
A few years ago, conversations about Main Street seemed to take a political turn and the concept became intertwined with promises to bring jobs and economic progress to small towns and the people who live in them.
I moved to metro Atlanta in 2006 and was immediately struck by the number of cities that had some type of Main Street. They were quaint and seemed to be booming, but these town centers that dot cities stretching from Woodstock to Fairburn were hardly havens for working class Georgians. Some of these commercial centers, anchored by craft breweries and chef-driven restaurants, require a certain level of disposable income to enjoy.
Means was in the Main Street game before anyone else and no one is more surprised than her to discover that the movement is still alive, said Means when we talked by phone last week from her home in Silver Spring, Maryland.
In the 1970s, Means shepherded a pilot program for the National Trust for Historical Preservation that revitalized the downtown areas of three small towns. A subsequent effort included six states, including Georgia, each of which selected five towns to participate. These efforts would ultimately evolve into Main Street America (which has local coordinating programs, Georgia Main Street and Atlanta Main Street).
Means left the National Trust in 1980s, opened a consulting firm and left Main Streets behind. It wasn’t until she received a 2019 award from the American Planning Association that she realized how impactful her work had been. Since 1980, the Main Street movement has brought $90 billion reinvested, 154,000 businesses started, 688,000 jobs created, and 300,000 buildings rehabilitated in towns nationwide, according to Main Street America.
In “Main Street’s Comeback: And How It Can Come Back Again,” Means details the history of the Main Street movement, why Main Streets remain an important place for community connections and how our nostalgic attachment to Main Street will likely keep it alive, even after a global pandemic.
Means was finishing her book just as the pandemic hit and she struggled to write the ending. There could be no triumphant ride off into the sunset when the very businesses she was writing about were in peril. Means watched and waited to see what would happen.
“The towns with Main Street programs were able to adapt a lot more resiliently than those that didn’t have them,” said Means. Staffers of local Main Street programs jumped in to help small businesses by advocating for outdoor dining and take-out or setting up websites, she said. “The ability of people to work together, networks of people who trust one another, that is going to be crucial for resilience,” Means said.
Some would say the future of any small town is only as strong as the broadband connections that will allow its residents to partake in global capitalism.
But Means knows our emotional connections to Main Streets run deep, and the four-point approach she helped developed decades ago — economic vitality, design, promotion and organization — has continued to work.
It has worked so well that Means is more optimistic that beleaguered businesses will return to Main Streets before they do to major cities.
The authenticity offered by independent stores and businesses, she said, is what drives people to Main Street.
Expanding our vision of Main Streets into more broadly connected and inclusive centers of commerce is what will save them.
Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and Twitter (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.
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