Main Street open house draws community

It was a chance to see the Reedsport Main Street Program close up.

Volunteers helped staff with an open house last Friday to introduce the community to the program and to recruit volunteers.

“There have been many volunteers who have worked diligently behind the scenes to make all this happen in a very short period of time,” Reedsport city manager Jonathan Wright said to introduce a short program.

He also introduced the crowd to Emesha Jackson, who is the city’s Main Street coordinator. She is a temporary employee who has worked on the program since she arrived.

“She is responsible for pouring out her heart and soul into everything that you see here,” Wright said. “She, literally, does not sleep anymore. We come in and she’s sleeping on her desk half the time because she was up half the night putting all these (displays) together. We are definitely appreciative.”

Wright explained the effort was the latest to create a Main Street program that will benefit all areas of the city.

He said citizens wanted to take the program past the last effort that fizzled out.

“It just kind of stopped,” Wright said, explaining the last effort ended before he became city manager. “When I got here I looked at it and said, ‘What happened?’ Everybody said, ‘Well, we talked about it, we talked about it and we talked about it.’ And, then it just quit. So, knowing that we just didn’t want to sit around and talk about what was going on the first thing the Main Street Committee did was do a project.”

That project was the decoration of vacant windows in downtown Reedsport.

“There’s not a lot of business activity going on downtown,” he explained, “but we want to make it look like there’s a lot of business activity. So, members of the Main Street organization got together and starting window facade decorations which you can see in the downtown. So, when you go through you don’t get the feeling of desolation. You don’t get the feeling of spotty business. It looks like there’s continuity in the downtown.”

The open house featured displays on Main Street programs, committee displays and logos designed by local students and professionals.

Volunteers also prepared a potluck and Wright cooked hot dogs. Safeway donated a lot of items for the open house dinner.

The open house was sponsored by Coastal Douglas Business and Arts Alliance. CDABA’s St. Patrick’s Day Trivia Contest and Pub Crawl on March 14 will benefit the Main Street program.

Other Main Street projects in the planning stages include a facade improvement project, window treatments, signage, landscaping, restoring and moving the steam donkey now located in Rainbow Plaza and banners.

And not just for the downtown area. Wright explained that almost all of Reedsport is “Main Street.”

Main Street board vice-chair Darlene Ash introduced the rest of the board: Ike Launstein, Ron Kreskey, Susan Martin, Debra Yates, Kim Clardy, Steve Miller, DeeDee Murphy, Debby Turner and Beck Brosi.

Main Street also has a design committee, economic restructuring committee and promotion committee.

“The Main Street program and developed and gained so much momentum since we first started,” Ash said. “It really is hard to believe that we’ve come this far. The program’s success is met with community involvement and participation and wouldn’t be possible without all of our volunteers’ efforts.”

Local students were recognized for logo designs they submitted. A design by Nicole Cooper was chosen as a design that graced T-shirts for sale at the open house. Four students were introduced at the open house.

Reedsport/Winchester Bay Chamber of Commerce ambassadors were at the open house to cut the ribbon for the Main Street program.