DEP to Host National Conference Tour

According to the Missouri Main Street Connection, Kansas City, Missouri, will serve as a living laboratory for doers, maker and innovators in downtown revitalization on March 26-28.  The Main Street Now Conference is the annual conference for the National Main Street Center that brings together a coast-to-coast network of city planners, community revitalization professionals, volunteers and elected officials working to sustain the future of America’s historic downtowns.  Through 18 mobile workshops and 94 education sessions, the 2018 Main Street Now Conference provides a forum for best practices on igniting and sustaining the redevelopment of small towns, mid-sized downtowns and urban commercial districts.  Attendees will examine how to strengthen downtowns of all sizes through a variety of tools, including supporting creative economies, attracting artisans and tech entrepreneurs, and developing small business.  The conference is the nation’s foremost educational and networking event for those engaged in revitalizing traditional commercial districts and downtowns through historic preservation-based community development.

The Downtown Excelsior Partnership (DEP) is proud to announce that it will be home to 1 of the 18 mobile workshops available during the Main Street Now National Conference.  Downtown Excelsior Springs will be sharing a mobile tour with Downtown Liberty.  On Tuesday, March 27th the mobile tour, Main Street Innovation and Entrepreneurship, will began at 8:30 a.m. in Downtown Liberty.  Tour goers will spend the day touring two of Missouri’s nationally accredited Main Street communities and witness how they have embraced history, innovation and entrepreneurship.  The morning begins in Historic Downtown Liberty, Missouri’s second oldest community.  Tour attendees will meet young entrepreneurs making their own history and see firsthand how they have transformed historic spaces into new uses.  They will tour the recently completed $5 million dollar streetscape around the square and learn how two cartoon cats, Frank and Lenny, helped make the project purrfect.

Then they will spend the afternoon touring Downtown Excelsior Springs, historically known for the healing properties of the spring waters.  Downtown Excelsior Springs has excelled at utilizing large historic structures for innovative purposes.  The tour will begin at the Historic Elms Hotel and Spa, a haunted landmark that has hosted everyone from Presidents to gangsters.  The tour will also showcase the newly renovated Payne Jailhouse Bed & Breakfast, as well as the tools used to renovate what was once The Oaks Hotel, into a beautifully restored senior living facility.  After a visit to the famous Historic Hall of Waters to see what tools are being used to save this property, the tour will end with the East Broadway project, located in the Historic Boarding House District, which is undergoing residential revitalization.  When you leave Excelsior Springs you will have a new sense of saving buildings, for both overnight accommodations and residential uses.  We hope you will come “drink the water” with us.

For questions or more information regarding this press release, please contact DEP Executive Director, Lyndsey Baxter, at exec@visitesprings.com.