Transcript
Speaker: Good afternoon. Hi. Hi, Ellen. How are you?
Speaker: good afternoon hi hi melan how are you I am great this beautiful sunny afternoon in our offices at the Hastings House. How are you? I am doing fantastic. Yes.
Speaker: This is episode one of Smithfield Time Walk Stories. How exciting. How fun we have a podcast. I mean, what a great way to share what we do, the message, the people of downtown. is going to be fun. I'm really excited. So, as I have like stepped into this new role here with events and marketing in downtown Smithfield and the things that I've learned over the last couple of months, and i what I think a lot of people want to know is who are we and who is the DSDC? Who is Downtown Smithfield Development Corporation?
Speaker: Okay, so Downtown Smithfield Development Corporation has a long history with Smithfield. We started this organization in 1986 as a mechanism for us, for the town of Smithfield, to be a part of the Main Street program. For those people that don't know what that is, Main Street America is part of the Department of Commerce, and it's an initiative that started in the late 1970s, early 1980s, to help small towns recover from the mass exodus of businesses going to shopping malls and leaving for suburban spaces. So what happened in that time was a lot of our downtown business spaces, the historic buildings, started to fall into disrepair because they weren't housing businesses anymore.
Speaker: And this initiative was a way to put some exposure on that and dedicate some funds and some energy towards revitalizing these downtown spaces because they are so important to community.
Speaker: Downtowns, especially in small towns and rural towns, are the identity of your town. They are the heartbeat, they're the center of all things about your town. When people ask where's Smithfield, they don't think about Walmart, you know, they think about what's downtown. So, you know, so putting some effort and focus on that was a real important thing for us. So since 1986, we've been working together with the town of Smithfield for the purpose of revitalization, but that focus has been heavily on preservation of historical assets. So the old buildings that we have, we don't want to lose those. And most importantly, really the economic development of our town. It goes hand in hand with the economic development of the town as a whole.
Speaker: So some super cool things that I've learned since I've been in this office, the the Buffalo Creek Greenway was a DSDC initiative. The News River Amphitheater Stage was a DSDC initiative. Having Power Lines Buried was a DSDC initiative. What are some of the other things that this organization has done?
Speaker: Oh gosh. You know, there have been over over the 40 years, there have been a number of things. The Hammond Yam Festival is a big one. That one still continues after 40 years. It's taken some ups and taken some downs, but we have rebuilt that into a really awesome destination festival for this town that really identifies Smithfield. But we've we've worked on streetscape projects over the years. We've worked on overlay districts and zoning concerns with the town of Smithfield so that we can make it a little bit more business friendly and more inviting to developers as they come into this space and help us grow this downtown.
Speaker: So Helen, let me flip the script Yeah, do it. What brought you to downtown Smithfield? I mean, tell us a little bit about Helen and tell me why you were interested in this role in this space.
Speaker: Got it. So, I grew up in Fuquay, so just over the county line, Wake County. I've always loved, Fuquay was a small town when I was ah a little kid. It was not the town that it is now.
Speaker: It was a really huge deal in 2000 when Fuquay got its Walmart. like That was groundbreaking. so I've always loved small towns and I've always loved being a part of a community.
Speaker: I started working in Smithfield during the pandemic. My sister needed help. She had started a job at a new company and I was just supposed to come in and be a temporary worker and audit some files. And that turned into a full-time role and I was working at Smithfield full-time.
Speaker: I did not love working in pest control, but I did fall in love with Smithfield at that time. I loved being able to walk around in our beautiful downtown streets. I loved going and getting coffee. i loved people knowing their neighbors and saying hi and connecting with the people of Smithfield.
Speaker: So my, before I was, before the pandemic, I was working in theater. So primarily stage management, which is a form of event management. management And I had always wanted to do event and municipal event management. So I was stepping out and I had decided this is what I was going to make a career change and make it happen.
Speaker: And then at the same time that I was making that decision, this position opened up. So it was just, perfect place, perfect time, and with a town that I already loved and community that i really wanted to be a part of.
Speaker: I love that, and we are so glad to have you here. One of the big things, you know, our our office is very busy. My job as executive director is pretty all-encompassing. am running the business office of running a non-profit organization, but in addition you know addition to that, really the biggest things that I have to take care of are economic development related. So on a very regular basis, nearly daily, i am meeting with or having calls with developers, new business owners, property brokers, property owners, and we're you know working towards all these development of our initiatives in addition to the project management that I do with like the library project, you know working with contractors and making sure these things get done, or the planters.
Speaker: You know, the contracts that we have with those. So having, you know, the events piece of this becomes such an important, robust part of our our organization. You know, having you on board to do that is really amazing. Not that we didn't do great events before, but I love that you have this passion for it. You love this town. You're a small town girl. You're a Southern girl. You get it, you know? And and we we want our events to be homey and inviting and and have everybody feel like they're welcome. So this podcast was your brainchild. And, you know, it goes just along with all the other things that we've added to make this a more robust destination driving kind of messaging that we're trying to create with our social media, with the events, you know, now with this podcast. So, yeah. I really hope, like, by...
Speaker: Growing up in North Carolina, everyone always, like, out-of-state people or people that move in, and they're like, oh, it's so cool. Like, you have the coast right there, and you have the mountains on the other side. And for a while, the Piedmont was lost in the shuffle.
Speaker: But really, in the last 20 years, and part of it I started driving myself and being able to not just do what my parents wanted to do on the weekends, but these little towns kept popping up with fun things to do in their downtown and make themselves a thing that you do and it's not always going to the beach or going to the coast it's going to the Madolipickle Festival and it is going to the Whirligig Festival in Wilson and it is going shopping in at the outlets in Smithfield that was one the first things that I knew about Smithfield was going shopping at the outlet mall and then I discovered that downtown was super cool
Speaker: And that's what I want. I want people to know that Smithfield is a place that you can come and you can spend your weekend, you can spend your Saturday, you can spend your afternoon and enjoy it yourself. And you don't have to go out to the coast or drive out to the mountains to do that.
Speaker: Absolutely. i think one of the the striking things about Smithfield and what drew me here too was the sense of community, the people. There are so many kind people that really, really want you to do well and they want good things for their town.
Speaker: And, you know, the hearing you talk about the events and all the cool things and the fun things, I think these small towns that are are employing the same program that we're doing, you know, Main Street program and working with creating these events and putting focus on their downtown. But what they're really doing is they're reinforcing this beautiful sense of community.
Speaker: And i love that we have that rich tapestry in our town to work with because i think our community is our biggest asset. Can you talk a little bit about in the last years or two years since you've been the executive director, some of the positive impacts that the mainstream program and the DSCC has had on downtown Smithfield?
Speaker: Absolutely. you know, when I took this position, the DSDC was in a lull. They had experienced some pretty serious challenges. There was some lack of leadership and and dysfunction within the leadership of it. And it had about six months there where we didn't have an executive director. So the first order of business really had to be re-identifying who we are as an organization and why what we do is so important for this town. So I think one of our great accomplishments, especially in that first year, was
Speaker: re-establishing this program, building a robust board of directors that is 100% invested in doing good things for this town. They are representatives of downtown property owners and businesses, residents, county commissioner, town Smithfield, chamber of commerce. You know we've got we've got people that are serious stakeholders as part of our board of directors and that has been tremendous in getting us focused in the right direction. um Another huge accomplishment, and this really falls in line with how we've redeveloped this program, is about five or six years ago, we lost accreditation with Main Street.
Speaker: We're still affiliated, we still you know participate in the program, but that accreditation was a big deal. um To be accredited with Main Street, we have to meet six standards of operation and management that are at a national standard.
Speaker: So those include diversity on our board and the way we interact and work with different organizations throughout our community, our budget, how we're spending our money. um You know, fiscal responsibility is a big, big part of what we do. We're a nonprofit. So, you know, we also get and MSD funds from property taxes from our downtown property owners. And you know showing people what we're doing with that money and that it's going towards the purpose that they have you know commissioned us to do is really important. So all of these standards, you know we we hadn't met for several years, but over the past 18 months, we were able to to do that. We were able to meet those standards and develop a robust strategic plan
Speaker: for transformation. It's a five-year plan that we are working towards. We've now technically met one whole year in that plan, so we're we're four years left of it. But all of those things, I think, are tremendous accomplishments. So some of the things that we've done that you might physically see out there is we worked with the Appearance Commission, the County Commissioners, Tourism, to and the Town of Smithfield to redevelop that park that area around the corner of the library and create a pocket pocket park for downtown. So instead of a kind of broken down, overgrown, unsightly corner, now we have cute, fun little park that, you know, moms, dads take their kids to the library for reading hour, and then they can come out and play for a while. Or you come downtown and you you want a great place to sit outside and have your lunch or have a cup of coffee, there's a nice spot to do it. and
Speaker: we're getting a new mural put up this week. in that park, so it you know it just keeps building and getting better. And that's something else that we've been able to incorporate in the last couple of years is some public art, bringing some colors, some textures, some life into downtown space. As we you know still navigate some challenges when it comes to business development, there's, with change, you know there's there's things that people come and people go, businesses work, businesses don't work, but we've been able to, as businesses have pulled out or not necessarily been successful here, we've been able to replace them with businesses that are doing better, that offer more amenities for our community.
Speaker: better hours, you know, and we just continue that momentum. So I think that that's another accomplishment is just the relationships that we've been building throughout the business community to start attracting the business mix we want instead of just taking whoever comes. Yeah. I think another thing that I want to make sure everyone knows is that when we talk about the DSCC, we're not just talking about you and me in this room, that we have a board that has 16 members on it that are our business community leaders, they are residents in downtown Smithfield, and they are really the like wheels that keep our missions moving forward. Well, and it's not just the 15 board members. We also have four robust committees that work this plan. So each of our board members is
Speaker: sitting on a committee. So in addition to the board member time that they have, they also put in commit committee member time. But you know we have several other people that aren't part of the board that volunteer on these committees as well. So we've got business owners. we've got you know we We want to work with people that can help us forward these initiatives. So you know these could be town employees. These could be attorneys. These could be, i mean, we've got people from oh sectors and different business relationships that interface with our downtown on these committees too. So it is a big deal. And we, you know, just as a statistic, I'm adding up the numbers that i report annually to the Main Street program.
Speaker: And from July to July 1st, July from last year to this year, We have 1,142 volunteer hours that have put been put into our downtown. Crap. Isn't that amazing? If you were to calculate that at the the North Carolina rate for dollars per hour, about $34 per hour that someone would make, that adds up to significant money. That's almost $40,000 that was gifted to our town simply because people just wanted to put the time in to help us.
Speaker: That's a big deal. you know, and on top of that too, we work with tremendous community partners to help us accomplish our goals too. As of this, not quite part of part of our 4th of July stuff, but looking at the big five events, we have accomplished over $100,000 in sponsorship support from community members. And that's that's people like WRAL and QDR Radio too,
Speaker: Bright Leaf Hot Dogs and some of our downtown businesses. you know We've got a great little business downtown called Tarver Group that's been super supportive. i mean It's community members all across the board that see what supporting this initiative looks like. and and We love it because those partnerships are good for them too. We help give them support. We help give them marketing as well. Yeah.
Speaker: So with the main treat accreditation, we had to send off everything that we were doing. They said, here's your gold star. You're doing a great job. This is how we want you to keep doing it. Can you give us some of those numbers that you reported back to the Department of Commerce and and what that looked like in this last fiscal year? Yeah, absolutely. So every July, because our fiscal year runs on the government fiscal, so July 1st June 30th, we are required to report a certain number of certain numbers out of our downtown. These are impact numbers. It shows kind of how the progress of of the program is working.
Speaker: And then they they accumulate this and they say, okay, in North Carolina, our program is you know offering this to each community. And then they do that on a national level too, to show how this is affecting all of the United States. So just to share a little bit about what's happened over the last fiscal year in private investment dollars,
Speaker: We have seen $2.7 million dollars in private investments. That is property acquisitions and renovations and just money being spent to better downtown spaces. We have seen two hundred just over $200,000 in public investment in downtown. And this is in the downtown district only.
Speaker: As far as job growth, I thought this was interesting because we have seen you know some businesses leave, some businesses come in. I think we've matched three for three. but we netted 21 full-time positions and 10 part-time positions. So what we lost, we gained even more. That's pretty impressive. And what that speaks to is that now we're looking at tax base growth, which is important for the town. The more money that the town can generate through commercial development and the tax base, the more they can put back into our town, not just downtown. I'd love to see that. you know There's a graphic and a statistic about what the
Speaker: the revenue generated per square mile is on investments. And, you know, you look at a Walmart or some, you know, large scale investment and you see, wow, that's a big number.
Speaker: But when you look at it per square mile or per square foot, how much space they take up and how much rent revenue that they actually generate, what's generated in a downtown is exponentially more than that So it's exciting to see our numbers growing in that regard. i also wanted to share that we we also offer grants and incentives to our downtown businesses. we Not everybody wants to take advantage of these, but the ones that have over the last year, it's been exciting. We've had several new businesses that have taken advantage of facade improvement and business support grants. And we have approved almost $21,000 in grant funds so far with a lot more to come.
Speaker: And another really fun I think it's exciting impact statistic is the amount of economic impact that this organization creates just through events. So just on our five signature events, Independence Day, Oktoberfest, Christmas, Celebrate Smithfield, and the Ham and Yum Festival, we've seen over 20,000 visitors in downtown just at those events in the past 12 months.
Speaker: The economic impact for our community of those visitors coming to our downtown is over $2 million. dollars So $2 million dollars is circulating in our community because of these events in addition to what they would come down for any other reason. And that doesn't include the smaller events that we do. So an exciting number two.
Speaker: The last thing that I wanted to do before we get into what is coming up in downtown Smithfield is just read out the mission and the vision statements of the DSCC. So our mission and vision statements, you can see them on our website, www.wb.com.
Speaker: www.downtownsmithfield.com. Thank you, Heidi. And you also can see when our board meetings are, which are public meetings. If you ever do want to become more involved in the DSCC, you can apply to be on any of our committees. You can apply to volunteer with us. So if you don't want to commit to doing a committee, but you want to be a part of the Independence Day Festival or the Hammond Neum Festival, our website is the best place to go to get plugged in to any of that. But Well, I know too that even if you aren't necessarily ready to commit your time, coming in and just sitting in on our meetings can be really insightful too. There's a lot of discussion that happens on those. And I think it's enlightening for people to know what we're working on, what we're working towards. so those are open to the public, every committee meeting and every board meeting.
Speaker: So the mission and vision statement for the Downtown Smithfield Development Corporation. The Downtown Smithfield Development Corporation is passionate about revitalizing the heart of our town.
Speaker: Our mission is to foster a vibrant and prosperous downtown area that showcases the best of Smithfield's charm, creativity, and community spirit. We strive to create a thriving hub of activity that attracts visitors, supports local businesses, and enriches the lives of our residents.
Speaker: That's our mission statement. And then the vision statement. So let's qualify that. okay The mission statement, if people aren't familiar with how this works, the mission statement is who we are today. What we're trying to accomplish, where, you know, kind of where we're at right now. Our vision statement is about the future. And this this vision statement is actually our strategic transformation plan in a couple sentences.
Speaker: At the heart of Johnston County on I-95, downtown Smithfield blends small town charm with big opportunities. We are in the business friendly economic center of Johnston County, a destination for exceptional food, art, and entertainment, and a hub for outdoor recreation from river to trail.
Speaker: Absolutely. So with that being said, that really those really are our goals. You know, right now we're actively recruiting and trying to transform spaces to be food and beverage type businesses. We know that food and beverage businesses bring foot traffic to downtown more frequently and more regularly. They also offer expanded hours so we can start developing a nightlife for downtown.
Speaker: And so we're we're seeing some growth in that, but we are definitely working towards more growth in that. You know, we have beautiful outdoor spaces and we're so blessed to have a river right here in the middle of our, well, at the edge of our downtown. But but really the Greenway Trail, you brought that up as being a project for DSDC.
Speaker: You know, we've got a beautiful trail to walk. We've got water. You can bring a fishing pole down and you can fish right here, you know, next to the amphitheater. Get it to the paddleboard. Absolutely. Right at the boat ramp, you know, and... And then we want to take advantage of little nooks and crannies and pockets of places that we can just be outside. I come from the Pacific Northwest, born and raised there. And, you know, love living here because we've got such a long season. You can be outside almost year round. I mean, take advantage. You know, I'm not used to that. I'm used to like six weeks of summer and the rest of it's yuck. So...
Speaker: When I cannot wear my flip-flops, I am genuinely upset. And so being a North Carolina and native, my flip-flop season lasts from about March to November-ish.
Speaker: those few months where I have to hide my toes in real shoes. It's depressing. Yeah. It is depressing. I know. And my husband teases me because i am the most thin-blooded Northern girl you'll ever meet. And he's like, he just laughs because... It gets to like 60 degrees. I'm freezing to death now because I love this. I bring on the heat. So yes, go outside and play and come downtown to go outside and play.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's why also the projects like the library, Corner Park is important. We are working on a making a pedestrian pathway that's going to be inviting and just invite people more to be outside and enjoy the beautiful North Carolina weather. Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely. You know, and the other thing too, and and this has been a challenge, and i think it will always be a challenge, but we want to be the business-friendly center of Johnston County. We're the county seed. we We're right smack dab in the middle of Johnston County. We are so well positioned. so you know, our goal is to to really drive that idea that business and commerce, everybody knows about Clayton, but Clayton's kind of, you know, little little Raleigh at this point, you know, we want john Johnston County's hub to be Smithfield. So that definitely is our goal too. Yeah. And that notion that I think every person carries with them that we want to be able to live, work and play all in the same spot.
Speaker: Absolutely. and And that is a big point. When you add housing developments and you do all the things to bring people here, our goal is to create a place where they want to not just buy a house or rent a house and work in Raleigh or some other place. We want them to invest here. We want them to put their businesses here. We want them to put their children in our schools and plan for a 30-year mortgage here. In Smithfield. So for everything else that is going on downtown Smithfield, please visit the website www.downtownsmithfield.com. We have our full calendar events with everything that is happening downtown.
Speaker: And be sure to follow us on social media. We've got a fake great Facebook page, downtown Smithfield, Instagram, downtown Smithfield. Our events are always listed there. Any updates that are happening, great news stories, all kinds of fun information come out on that as well.
Speaker: Be sure to like and follow our podcast. Leave us a five-star review wherever you are listening, whether it is Apple Music, Stitcher, Spotify. We're so thankful that you decided to come and spend a little bit of podcast time with us here in downtown Smithfield, and we hope that you come and visit us in downtown Spitzfield.
Speaker: Be sure to check out our next episode of the podcast, ah July of Independent Retailers Month. So we will be diving into all of our independent retailers in downtown Spitzfield in different ways that you can support them.
Speaker: And with that said, be sure to shop small and shop local. Yes, of course. So thank you for tuning in. And until next time, we'll see you on the sidewalk.
