Wyoming downtown leaders to learn new skills, strategies in Missouri

Wyoming Main Street escorted a bus jampacked with downtown advocates to the Kansas City, Missouri, area March 21-March 29 for a week of workshops, classes and a national conference dedicated to teaching local leaders how to market their communities, fundraise for new amenities, develop a thriving commercial scene and breathe new life into their towns and cities.

The event consisted of two parts. The first is a uniquely Wyoming event called the Best Practices Workshop, in which Main Street staff and community supporters spent two days visiting four Missouri towns ranging in size from 5,300 to 30,000 people. These communities face similar challenges to Wyoming's.

Leaders from each town guided the Wyoming visitors around while explaining how they approach marketing; incorporate public art; redevelop historic property into functional, modern uses; create public space and help the cores of their communities thrive.

The aphorism goes that great artists steal. The National Main Street Center takes the saying to heart by encouraging community leaders to incorporate what works elsewhere back home. That’s what the sponsorship-driven Best Practices Workshop, now in its 10th year, is all about.

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