Mountain-to-Sea Trail work in Hillsbrough

The volunteers who are building the Mountain- to-Sea Trail are having a volunteer workday near the Historic Occaneechi Speedway Trail (HOST) site along the Eno River in Hillsborough on Saturday, January 29^th.  The planned work is to clear brush and begin digging the trail.  If you are interested, please email John Willis at jhw445@hotmail.com.  He is coordinating the workday and needs a head count.  Please share this notice with others who may be interested, lots of hands are needed.

The workday will begin at 9:00am and last until 3 or 4:00pm.  Folks are welcomed to work as long as they are able and leave when necessary.  Please meet up at 8:45 AM at the HOST parking area on Elizabeth Brady Road.  Please bring water and a bag lunch.  Tools will be provided.

To Save a Small Town

What happens when the central square of a once-thriving small town — indeed, the governmental seat of its surrounding county — begins to decay amid declining revenues, general neglect and disrepair? What happens when classic architectural details begin to disintegrate on the deteriorating historic structures that once proudly drew the community’s residents into town to shop, dine and mingle? Does a white knight ever ride into such a place to rescue it from the mire?

In the case of Bolivar, Tennessee, the answer was a resounding yes.

At the same time that Bolivar’s town officials were vying for state funding to revitalize the courthouse, several local businessmen were busy crafting a much larger plan to bring prosperity and an old-fashioned sense of community back to the town square. The group hired Memphis-based firm Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, Inc., in concert with Page/Duke landscape architects of Nashville, to study how to revitalize the area around the courthouse and to create a master plan. The resulting Hardeman County Development Strategy was presented to Tennessee’s Governor in September 2007.

The plan recommended that “rural stewardship” be used to create an incentive-based regional growth strategy that preserves and enhances the county’s best assets. The plan focused on the inter-relationships between historic preservation, conservation, transportation and tourism. In it, several major initiatives were outlined, featuring a master plan for downtown Bolivar, as well as the creation of a life-like battlefield memorial, improved access to the nearby Hatchie River, and construction of a new lake as part of the Bill Dance Signature Lake Trail throughout Tennessee.

The town was one of only six state jurisdictions to be awarded funds through The Courthouse Square Revitalization Act of 2005. With the help of Ben Page, Looney Ricks Kiss, and others, the project launched. Historic buildings around the square were restored, and new retail tenants began moving in. Sidewalks were updated, and streetscapes were planted with ginkgoes and crape myrtles. The courthouse was renovated, and a new 300-seat outdoor amphitheater was put in place just behind it.

To date, a number of projects have been completed, and the goal of bringing people back to the square has been realized. Each week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, town residents converge around the courthouse, often hundreds in all, to enjoy concerts in the amphitheater.

Location:

The town of Bolivar, with a population of about 6,000, is located in Hardeman County, just 45 minutes east of Memphis, Tennessee. The area’s current economy is based on light manufacturing, wood milling and agriculture.

HARDEMAN COUNTY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY:

The plan that was presented to the Governor in September 2007 included the following projects:

• Bolivar Downtown Master Plan: Using funds awarded through The Courthouse Square Revitalization Act of 2005, establish Bolivar as an attractive and desirable place to live, work and play.
• Highway By-Pass: Create a boulevard-type by-pass that traverses the countryside adjacent to the city in order to divert large trucks away from the courthouse square.
• Bolivar/Hardeman County Airport: Improve the existing hangar and runways, build a new entrance and access roads, and construct a new terminal to serve the growing needs of the community and the region and to make the area more accessible to tourists.

Warren Street, behind the Courthouse, is blocked off during outdoor concerts so the stage can be set up for the band.

• Hatchie River: Create the Hatchie River Conservancy with a mission torestore, preserve and enhance use of the Hatchie River, designated by The Nature Conservancy as one of the 75 last great places on earth most deserving of protection for future generations.
• Lake Silerton: Create an additional asset to attract tourism and serve as a catalyst for community development, while also creating a centerpiece for recreational enjoyment for the region.
• Ghost of Davis Bridge: Create a three-dimensional Civil War battlefield complete with life-size figures carved from limestone at the site of the Battle of Hatchie Bridge (also called Davis Bridge).

COMPLETED PROJECTS (AS OF 10 OCTOBER, 2009):

• Restoration of the historic Hardeman County Courthouse.
• Construction of a 300-seat amphitheater adjacent to the courthouse.
• Improvements to the square’s sidewalks and streetscapes, including landscaping and lighting.
• Restoration of more than 50 buildings surrounding the Courthouse square.
• Construction of a timber-framed pavilion that is home to the new Farmers’ Market, just a block from Court Square.

FUTURE PROJECTS SLATED FOR DEVELOPMENT:

• Turn a fire-ravaged block along Court Square into a remarkable theater of performing arts, blending the new (a grand theater with state-of-the-art acoustics) with the historic by transforming the old Bank of Bolivar building (listed in the National Register of Historic Places) into a breathtaking lobby (with 25-foot ceilings and balconies) and reception hall.
• Construct a charming new hotel fashioned from a row of Reconstruction Era buildings and storefronts right on Court Square.
• Construct a courtyard for relaxing or dining immediately adjacent to Farmers’ Market.

For more information on Bolivar, contact Marni Truelove, mtruelove4@comcast.net, 615.636.2077

Conflict Management

I recently visited a downtown development nonprofit in a local small town. The executive director told a story about how, within the first couple months of his job, a local church informed the community that they were going to take down one of their historic buildings in order to add parking. The new director was forced to launch a campaign to save the building. The episode caused a lot of pain in the community, and the building was lost.

Since downtown organizations are continually facing conflicts about all sorts of issues, including development pressures, I thought I would share with you some of the principles of conflict management taught to me by the Orange County Dispute Settlement Center in North Carolina.

Positions vs interests

A lot of times we argue from a set-in-stone position instead of an underlying issue. An example would be two people arguing about whether a window should be open or shut in a room.

Position 1: The window needs to be closed.

Position 2: The window needs to be open.

Interest 1: Raising the temperature of the room.

Interest 2: Keeping pollen out of the room.

Granted, this is a springtime example that I am giving you in the middle of winter, but you can remember what spring was like, can’t you? I believe this example came from Getting to Yes, by Roger Fisher and William Ury. Once you look at the problem from an interest standpoint, you can come up with an easy solution that solves both party’s problems in a spirit of collaboration.

Solution: Raise the thermostat.

This is assuming that neither party has an interest to keep the planet viable, which happens a lot.

“I” messages vs “you” messages

Anyone who has ever been involved in a conflict will know that you can’t negotiate with someone by constantly pointing the finger back at them. If you do that, all they have to say is, “No, that’s not true,” and you don’t get anywhere. If instead, you focus on what your own thoughts and feelings are, then the other party is more inclined to listen.

Conflict management styles

Competing: Pursuing personal concerns at the expense of someone else.

Accommodating: Yielding to the other party’s point of view.

Avoiding: Not addressing the conflict.

Compromising: Seeking the middle ground.

Collaborating: Working together to come up with a solution that is pleasing to both parties.

Would you agree that collaborating is the desired conflict management style in most cases? However, the other styles have their appropriate uses. For example, you don’t want to collaborate with someone who does not want  to get out of a burning building if they don’t want to go.

Perfection vs discovery

Perfection: We act as a judge. Things are black and white. Failure is seen as bad. This can lead to frustration.

Discovery: We act as a coach. You look for creative solutions. There is more of an attitude of acceptance. This can lead to fascination.

This is the tip of the iceberg. If you would like more information, feel free to contact me, or, particularly if you are local, the Orange County Dispute Settlement Center.

Third places

Our friend Mike Knutson over at Reimagine Rural saw our post about Jim Thorpe, and this got him thinking about a recent post he made about third places.  Third places are those hot spots in your community where you can share ideas, such as coffee shops.  Mike goes into detail about the characteristics of third places here.  Third places are neutral ground,  accessible and accommodating, and are places where you can routinely run into regulars.   In case you are wondering, the first place is your home and second place is your work.

How important are third places to you?  Should we make a special effort to design communities with third places?

Do downtown promotions = dollars downtown?

Smallwander.com is hosting it’s monthly teleconference this upcoming Monday, Nov 24, from 10 to 11 am.  The topic is “Do downtown promotions = dollars downtown?

I particularly would like to explore why Hillsborough NC’s recent “Ladies Night Out” promotion was successful.  On a rainy Thursday night, hordes of women descended on the town and bought like crazy in the shops.  If you have similar stories about how special events translate to dollars in the shops, please think about them beforehand and share them with us.

Panelists will include Amy Wilmoth, a freelance marketing consultant for small businesses in the Triangle area of North Carolina, Elizabeth Read, Executive Director of the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough, Eddie Ide, President of Newton Merchants, Inc. of Newton North Carolina, and Greta Lint, tourism consultant.

We will be inviting town representatives in our smallwander network.  People will be able to either call in via telephone or listen in over the web.  They can also type questions to us.

Tell us your stories

We have a new website design coming out.  So, what does that mean to you?  Well, the new design will enable our towns and travelers to enter their own stories directly from the website.  Smallwander staff will review the posts and approve them, keeping out the cranks.  This will allow us to get more good information about cool small towns up onto the site quicker.  So, there should be steadier stream of new towns added.  Plus, you’ll be getting more on-the-ground information from travelers and SW staff in addition to the party-line info from the smallwander PR machine.

Our site is being redesigned by Lisa Sabin-Wilson of E. Webscapes Design, and author of Wordpress for Dummies.  We have known we wanted to go to a more interactive, user-generated website for about a year, but it’s taken about that long to research what system to use, decide who would design it, and build the new site.  After deciding on going with a Wordpress platform, I was extremely thrilled to get Lisa on board, who literally wrote the book on designing Wordpress sites.  She has been great to work with, and we look forward to some great new functionality with the WP platform.  We thank Interactive Communications, Inc. for our current website, which did exactly what wanted during this intermediary year.

So, get ready to start sending us your stories, photos, and videos of the small, historic towns that you love.  Your fellow travelers want to hear about what you have to say.  Plus, we’ll be meeting with our towns to encourage them to provide more of the same.

Social media discussion, Monday morning, Oct 27

Did you know you can stream live video over the web for free these days?

Did you know you can, in fact, stream live video from your phone?

Did you know a Wall Street Journal blogger posts videos captured from a $200 camcorder?  (And the price has dropped significantly since then.)

These are just a few of the things I learned at this year’s Converge South conference.

Call in on Monday morning (Oct 27) at 10 am to participate in a conversation about some of the new tools that are using to build communities on the web and beyond.  Hear more about Twitter, Facebook, blogging, and other social media.

I’ve invited a few bloggers and techies who I met at the conference, including Wayne Sutton and Ginny Skalski at 30threads.  These folks are experts at creating news and information networks.  They administer the mync.com site.

Robert Scoble, a world-reknowned tech and social media geek, was at the conference to show us how he is using video to get the message across these days.  Although Robert won’t be on the call, we’ll be passing on a lot of what he shared with us.

Converge at Converge South

Last year, travel consultant Greta Lint tuned me in to an event that took smallwander.com in a new direction.  I was going to say it changed my life, but I’m not that dramatic.

Converge South is a free conference about using the ever-emerging technologies of the web to communicate with your fellow beings.  Once known simply as a blogging conference, it has grown to include sessions on shooting video for online publication, creating podcasts, increasing online traffic, and the like.

The conference takes place in Greensboro, NC once a year.  This year’s is happening this week, on Thursday and Friday, October 16 and 17.

At last year’s conference, I was a new web entrepreneur who had not entered into the universe of blogging.  After attending the sessions and meeting with friendly participants, I happily hopped on the boat and began learning the vocabulary.   The following definitions are abridged from Wikipedia:

Blog: A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.  (You are reading a blog right now.)

Podcast: A podcast is a series of digital-media files, which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

RSS: Really Simple Syndication.  An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”) contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.

Social media: Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories, and understandings.

Social networking: A social network service uses software to build online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

Search Engine: Search engines provide an interface to a group of items that enables users to specify criteria about an item of interest and have the engine find the matching items.

Search Engine Optimization: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords.

Web 2.0: Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.

Wiki: A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.

With these new “social media” web tools, smallwander.com is better able to collaborate with both town representatives and travelers.  We are better able to share information and learn from each other instead of relying on the staid, brochure-like world that existed previously on the web.

A couple months after last year’s conference, I had our two smallwander blogs up-and-running, Small Towns, which has information to help historic and charming towns to promote themselves, and Smallwanderer, a blog for travelers who are looking for authentic small town experiences.  In fact, our main website is also evolving into a more blog-oriented platform.  We’ll have an announcement on our new web design shortly.

I also learned a little bit about podcasting at the conference, and we launched our first podcast also in May.

If you are in driving distance to Greensboro, NC, I strongly encourage you to attend.

Next seminar – creating special events to stimulate downtowns

Our next smallwander.com seminar will be an open discussion about planning special seasonal events in small towns.  With the holiday season approaching, many towns plan Christmas parades and home tours.  How important are they for your downtown?  Share your experiences with other downtown managers and tourist officers who are hoping to initiate these types of events.

Judy Wicks on Local Living Economies

I went to a talk given by Judy Wicks last night at the NC Museum of History, hosted by the Center for Environmental Farming Systems.  As one member of the audience commented, Judy is a dynamo.

She is a co-founder of Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), which builds networks of locally-owned businesses within communities that promote buying from each other, respecting the environment, and paying a living wage.  At home, she built the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia.  Each of the networks draws on local experts representing the building blocks of a sustainable economy:  food, power, health, construction, etc.

She is a living example of following her conscience.  As the owner of the White Dog Cafe, she originally felt resistance to the living wage movement because she did not want to be told by others what she should pay her employees.  But after looking at the faces of her trusted staff, she thought, of course she wanted to make sure they were able to cover their basic needs.

This personal connection with people and place has been an ongoing theme for her.  She feels personally responsible for her restaurant’s location, which is also where she lives.  She has been living on the second floor of her brownstone building in Philadelphia ever since she fought to prevent it from being torn down to make room for a mall.  After a drought died up the natural areas close to home, she became conscious of how she was contributing to global warming and converted her restaurant to run on 100% renewable energy.

The White Dog Cafe is famous for being the first in the Philadelphia area to use humanely-raised cows and pigs and organic produce.  In order to make that happen, she had to personally set up a network of suppliers.  And, she didn’t stop there.  She felt strongly enough about shifting her local economy away from factory farming, the Cafe provided capital to help the suppliers distribute the good stuff to her competitors.  This grew into a non-profit, White Dog Community Enterprises, which receives 20% of their income from the for-profit restaurant.

Believe it or not, there is more.  Her life and work is a great example of the benefits of carefully building local living economies. Smallwander.com believes that towns that incorporate these principles are also great places to visit, since they are living and vibrant, take care of their people and animals, have unique activities going on, and celebrate the authentic.