photo by: Journal-World File

Representatives with the Kansas Main Street Program will visit Baldwin City on Monday and Tuesday to explain how the program can benefit the community's downtown. Baldwin City was one of three Kansas cities invited to join the program this year.

This coming week, Baldwin City will look to build on recent downtown success as it starts tapping into additional resources associated with its entry into the Kansas Main Street Program.

It was announced in March that Baldwin City, Atchison and Junction City were selected as this year’s Kansas Main Street Program cities.

Lori Trojan, executive director of the Baldwin City Chamber of Commerce and the Baldwin City Main Street Program, said three Kansas Main Street Program representatives, including Director Scott Sewell and business specialist Shelley Paasch, will visit Monday and Tuesday to tour the community and introduce the program to residents.

The three will meet with residents from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday and 9 a.m. to noon Tuesday at the Lumberyard Arts Center, 718 High St., Trojan said. They will meet with downtown property owners, developers, and local and county-level elected officials, she said. Tuesday the three representatives will meet with the four strategic planning committees.

The Kansas Main Street Program’s website defines itself as a “self-help” program that provides technical assistance to help communities maintain and revitalize their downtowns. The program does that through focusing on the four areas of economic vitality, tourism, promotion and design.

Trojan said Baldwin City strategic planning committees in those four focus areas have been formed, but chairpersons have not yet been named.

The goal of Baldwin City’s participation in the program is to develop coordinated strategic plans in the four focus areas with the aid of the technical experts that the Kansas Main Street Program makes available, Trojan said. That will help the city, property owners and business owners tap into grant funds, some of which are already available with the city’s designation as a Main Street community. One of those funding programs now available makes up to $75,000 in matching funds available for renovation projects on downtown buildings. That fits with the Kansas Main Street Program’s goal of preserving and revitalizing historic downtown buildings and enhancing those business districts, she said.

Also important are the opportunities for professional growth available through seminars, workshops and webinars that the Kansas Main Street Program offers, Trojan said. Those opportunities and others in the program are available to all in Baldwin City and are not limited to those in the downtown district, she said.

Baldwin City Administrator Glenn Rodden suggested that the city apply for the program. He previously served as city administrator in Holton and Seneca when those cities were designated as Kansas Main Street Program cities.

Rodden said Holton was able to make significant upgrades to its four-block downtown that surrounds the Jackson County Courthouse square. The district had many older buildings, some with Victorian facades, that had fallen into disrepair.

The Kansas Main Street Program has an architectural services element and funding to help with downtown revitalization efforts, he said.

Seneca made use of its strategic planning to secure a Kansas Department of Transportation grant to help with the repair of downtown brick streets, Rodden said. That is an interest in Baldwin City, which has numerous blocks of brick streets in the downtown area. Labor-intensive rehabilitation of brick streets can cost up to $400,000 per block, he said.