When a West Virginia University (WVU) Fashion, Design and Merchandising professor called Main Street Morgantown to say she was looking for a downtown space where her students could run a retail store, they sent her to me. As a board member working on Main Street’s vacant storefront revitalization effort, Morgantown ReStored, I’d developed a good sense of what spaces were available and who owned what.

Beth explained that she had run multiple retail stores herself in years past and now wanted to create a place where her students could get hands-on experience in all aspects of a retail business — from creating displays and sourcing and stocking merchandise to making sales and turning a profit. Having been to the Savannah College of Art and Design’s store, which sells work created and designed by SCAD students, alumni, and faculty, I knew just how exciting her idea could be for our community.

Connecting University and Downtown

Our downtown borders one of two WVU campuses. Even so, the town and the University are far from integrated. Many locals describe town-gown relations as strained. College students frequent downtown bars and clubs for late-night entertainment, but few students wander downtown during the day, thanks to the draw of shopping centers and a plethora of new off-campus housing developments on the other side of town.

As with many downtowns across the country, ours has seen a steep decline in occupancy in recent years, as well as an influx of people seeking addiction services. Those of us working with Main Street Morgantown decided the best way to combat these complex problems was to give people (and businesses) as many reasons as possible to come downtown.

The idea of providing a space that would draw students, professors, and their families off campus and into the downtown on a regular basis held a lot of promise. I’d attended conferences where cities described the transformation that occurred once they integrated university campus buildings into their towns, bringing with them a steady stream of foot traffic. 

Building Partnerships for Success

One specific storefront instantly came to mind. Main Street Morgantown had vacated its downtown office just a few months before I spoke with Beth, after merging with a parent organization that already had its own office space. The old office sat empty, but Main Street still had at least two years left on its lease. With plenty of space available for rent downtown, subleasing the space seemed difficult, and Beth’s idea presented an opportunity to solve this problem as well.

“I’m really into Main Street programs right now,” the development officer of a major local foundation had told me when I’d met him just a few months before. We’re interested in funding systems-level partnerships, Bill had explained. After talking with Beth, I emailed Bill to ask if a Main Street Morgantown-WVU partnership was the kind of thing he had in mind. It was.

Beth and I began working on a grant application to the Benedum Foundation to fund the project. Meanwhile, our town’s art center, located just down the street from the former Main Street office, was also talking to Bill about their own grant application. Bill suggested we work together.

While a small group of us conspired to combine our efforts into a cohesive program idea, we learned that a mission-driven lender already planned to bring its Alliance for Creative Rural Economies (ACRE) Program to Morgantown. The ACRE Program offers free business education to a cohort of creative entrepreneurs who learn and work together for over a year.

With the addition of the ACRE Program and its already established curriculum, Beth, Main Street, and the arts center worked together to conceive of The Artisan Entrepreneurship Program. We envisioned a multi-component program that included funding for the arts center to offer low-cost studio space and other opportunities for artists (an incubator space), the chance for artists to sell their work in a retail environment and receive individualized feedback (an accelerator space we called The Retail Lab), and opportunities to participate in arts markets and pop-ups downtown — all complimented by ACRE’s practical business training.

Morgantown is a small town, but it is full of creative people and nonprofits doing interesting work. They just don’t always work together. Creating a program built on partnerships presented a real opportunity for all of the organizations involved to practice coordinating efforts and building relationships. 

A New Community Space

Even before its opening, we filled The Retail Lab with people for various events. We created a ​“How I Built This”-inspired speaker series featuring creative entrepreneurs, funded by our grant dollars, which drew a surprising mix of older community members and students. Main Street Morgantown and WVU came together to cross-promote the series, as well as the space itself.

WVU is now fully on board with the new hands-on learning lab, and students and their parents now have a new reason to visit downtown.

While not every town has a big university to partner with, the exercise of working together and using each other’s respective expertise and skills to create something bigger than each could do alone is a concept that can be applied anywhere. The simple act of collaborating on a project created new bonds and a real feeling of community between both individuals and organizations.

Not only did we fill a vacant storefront and create a brand-new audience for our downtown, we practiced working together to do it. While it may not be written into Main Street’s mission statement, helping to create a shared sense of purpose, pride, and accomplishment is sure to better any community.

Downtown Decorations, a Main Street America Allied Member, is this quarter’s Main Spotlight advertiser. For more information about what they do to support Main Street organizations, click here.