10/27/2026
The approach many small towns take when it comes to downtown revitalization usually depends on small business owners taking enormous personal/financial risks while everyone else gets to celebrate the progress. Gives me the ick.
We ask these folks to invest in buildings they don’t own, extend their hours, participate in every event we think of, donate to every fundraiser, and somehow find the money to do it all again next year and then things aren’t working, we ask them to try harder/do more marketing.
But what are other downtown stakeholders doing to help?Here’s some questions I see the best of the best ask themselves consistently:
Local governments: Are you removing unnecessary barriers, improving infrastructure, and creating policies that make it easier to open and sustain a business? And are you holding folks accountable with either incentives or consequences when they aren’t in line?
Property owners: Are you maintaining your buildings, offering reasonable lease terms, and actively working to fill vacancies? Or are you waiting for everyone else’s investments to increase your property value?
Chambers, Main Street organizations, and economic development teams: Are you measuring business retention, vacancy rates, and economic activity, or are you measuring success by how many people attended the last festival? Festivals/gatherings are important, but should be one tool in our toolkit.
Community members: Are you consistently spending money downtown, or are you expecting someone else to keep your favorite businesses open?
Small business owners: Are you delivering great experiences, adapting to customer needs, managing your numbers, and doing your part to build a stronger business?
Shared accountability means EVERYONE has a responsibility, but it also means those responsibilities need to come with actual commitments, measurable outcomes, and consequences when things aren’t working.
If vacancies are a problem, who owns the solution? If weekday foot traffic is nonexistent, who’s working to change that? If businesses keep closing, who’s truly asking why and doing something with the answers?
We cannot keep calling downtown revitalization a community-wide effort while treating small business survival as an individual responsibility.
