How do you make your Downtown Famous? How do you get visitors to shop and eat at the restaurants? How do you get businesses to move in?
Miriam Schaffer and I are going to be giving a talk about those issues this week at the California Downtown Conference in Riverside, CA. If you haven’t registered for the conference yet, there is still one day, so do it!
We at the Placemaking Group have had the privilege of helping to make many downtowns famous. When we start the process, one of the first things we do is to get the group who hired us to understand that there are specific things that make your downtown different from the downtowns of neighboring cities. Sometimes if you’re too familiar with your own downtown, you don’t even realize the differentiators. That’s where we come in. We’ll talk to the people walking in your downtown. We talk to the businesses that are there. We’ll listen to what is said and what isn’t said. (more…)
