Crisfield hosts site tour as town strives for Main Street Maryland status
Crisfield, Md. — The City of Crisfield took the next step of their application to be part of the Main Street Maryland program with the state visiting locations around the city Wednesday.
Representatives from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development visited the proposed site of Crisfield’s Main Street district with city leaders. The Main Street program, which provides guidance and support for Maryland towns as they work to revitalize their areas.
Jackie Collins, the Crisfield director of grants and strategic initiatives, said joining the Main Street program would be a boost for the downtown area.
“It is a way of revitalizing your downtown areas, and we think that Crisfield just has so much to offer that we really want to make sure that we revitalize, have economic development, have our residents, have a community that we are proud of and attract people to our community,” Collins said.
Crisfield city councilwoman Lavern Johnson said the plan is to bring Crisfield’s Main Street back into prominence.
“Main Street used to be a thriving area for us,” Johnson said. “We’re hoping to revitalize Main Street again. That’s our goal.”
The proposed district would stretch from 6th Street down to the city’s Armory, according to a city website detailing the application.
The city said that the area has an over 50 percent vacancy rate – but significant cultural, historic, and economic assets. Those assets were the focal point of Wednesday’s tour. And the city hopes to reduce the vacancies through the program.
“We tried to highlight things that have already been invested, both, publicly and privately. And just highlighting those things that we have going on currently in the city and things that we think will be a draw to our community and just an asset to our community,” Collins said.
Collins added that they worked to showcase some businesses that had previously been given grants, with the goal of demonstrating that the support was well spent.
DHCD reps also met with local residents and business owners to get a broader view of the program’s potential impacts. Collins said the city highlighted five new businesses and were able to show DHCD the interior of two of them.
“We tried to give a flavor so they could hear from not just the government, but to hear from everyone in the community, to lend a voice to what we’re trying to do,” Collins said.
Now that the site visit is complete – the city will wait for DHCD to determine whether they qualify for the program. City Councilman Eric Banks said they are looking forward to hearing about the next steps.
“Just excited about the opportunity to demonstrate our readiness and the commitment that we hope to have with DHCD,” Banks said. “Just looking forward to a couple months – we should get a green light and hopefully we can go to the next step.”
