The view from up here: What role does government have?

The name of this col­umn alludes to the fact that I’m writ­ing from the third floor of the McEldowney Building in down­town Winchester, just across the street from the cour­t­house. From my office, I can look down on Main Street and see every­thing that takes place there. Currently, it’s most­ly just men in hard hats pour­ing con­crete, lay­ing bricks, and grad­u­al­ly rebuild­ing the high side steps, walls, and side­walks. But that’s some­thing, right?

I can also see Cindy, Jill, Teresa, and all the oth­er great folks at Tourism and the Chamber as they come and go. I do watch out for Jill — I under­stand she is quite prone to falling, and get­ting in and out amid the side­walk work must be a chal­lenge for her!

Sometimes I like to go up on the roof of the McEldowney, some 60 feet or so above the street, and just take it all in. Our town is beau­ti­ful from up here, and the com­ple­tion of this con­struc­tion project some­time between now and October will ush­er in a new era of vibran­cy for our thriv­ing downtown.

I was talk­ing to a down­town mer­chant recent­ly who told me he had had an epiphany of sorts. Paraphrasing from mem­o­ry, he said some­thing like, “I have decid­ed that it is my sole respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­mote my shop. It’s not the job of the city to do that. It’s on me.”

That shop­keep­er kept to his word, pump­ing out social media con­tent and attract­ing loads of out-of-town cus­tomers to his shop. He also not­ed that he rec­om­mends oth­er great shops and eater­ies to his customers.

I’ve been mulling over his words ever since he spoke to me. I agree with him to a cer­tain extent. Government’s pri­ma­ry func­tion is not to pro­mote busi­ness but to pro­vide the infrastructure—including streets, side­walks, pub­lic safe­ty, fire pro­tec­tion, and a code of ordi­nances that cre­ates the oppor­tu­ni­ty to thrive, for indi­vid­ual res­i­dences as well as businesses.

But local gov­ern­ment can and should play a role in help­ing busi­ness­es suc­ceed in oth­er ways. Quasi-gov­ern­ment and pri­vate insti­tu­tions, such as the Winchester-Clark County Chamber of Commerce and the Winchester-Clark County Tourism Commission, can also do so. 

Both of these crit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions employ skilled pro­fes­sion­als com­mit­ted to encour­ag­ing more peo­ple to vis­it, shop, and live in our community. 

Maintaining a vibrant down­town is chal­leng­ing amid the rise of big-box stores and sub­ur­ban expan­sion.  But it’s worth the effort—you can tell a lot about a town by the con­di­tion of its cen­tral busi­ness district.

And peo­ple do not dri­ve to Winchester to shop at the same places they have in their towns. Nobody dri­ves 25 miles to shop at Walmart (unless their town doesn’t have one!) But they will (and do) dri­ve across coun­ty and state lines to vis­it unique shops like Mason on Main, The Crystal Coven, Ekklectic Alchemy, Dirty South Pottery, and the many small bou­tiques and shops on and near Main Street.

They’re not like­ly to vis­it our town for a Big Mac, but they will dri­ve for miles to expe­ri­ence Loma’s at the Opera House, The Lucky Dog, La Trattoria, Regeneration, Smoking Howard’s, and more.

(By the way, I am not min­i­miz­ing the draw­ing pow­er of oth­er fine local­ly-owned busi­ness­es and restau­rants on the bypass and out in the coun­ty, but this sto­ry is about downtown.)

What makes all these local hot spots unique is that they are all run by peo­ple who are ded­i­cat­ed to their busi­ness­es and the com­mu­ni­ty at large. And let’s not for­get the non­prof­its that add to the vibrance and fun of Winchester—Leeds Center for the Arts, Bluegrass Heritage Museum, Arts on Main, All Voices Reading Room, and more.

I don’t know which of these are mem­bers of the Chamber of Commerce, but I do know that they all ben­e­fit from the pro­mo­tion the Chamber and Tourism office do for them. They all ben­e­fit from the ser­vices pro­vid­ed by our city and coun­ty gov­ern­ments. And they all ben­e­fit from hav­ing a pop­u­la­tion of peo­ple in and around Clark County who appre­ci­ate the unique oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able in down­town Winchester, or as my friend Lauren Mink calls it, “FUN-Chester!”

But why should we care about attract­ing shop­pers from near­by com­mu­ni­ties?  Next time, I’ll dis­cuss that.