Athens Main Street gains statewide honors

ATHENS – Athens Main Street brought home four awards of excellence at the 10th annual Main Street Alabama Conference, sponsored by Alabama Municipal Electric Authority and Alfa Companies.

“Athens Main Street appreciates the recognition of the great strides being made toward revitalization in our downtown,” said Athens Main Street Executive Director Tere Richardson. “Thank you to those in our community that were so instrumental in the success of these efforts.”

The awards are:

• Excellent in Marketing: This award recognizes outstanding efforts in overall marketing by a Main Street organization to promote the entire district as a destination or a branding or image development campaign. The Athens Main Street brand ambassadors, led by Devin Simmons and Blake Williams, were cited for the award. The ambassadors showcased merchants, restaurants, events, and even suggested those unique experiences that only downtown insiders know about. The ambassadors is a group of high school students, parents, young professionals, and business owners.
• Excellence in Business Promotion: This award recognizes local promotions, events, and activities that result in increased sales or the development of effective retail promotion in conjunction with district merchants. The promotion was the one-day Athens Main Street Boutique Crawl, featuring 18 downtown Athens clothing and gift boutique stores featuring major specials and surprises for shoppers. The businesses reported more than $30,000 in sales for the day.
• Excellence in Building Design (non-historic): This award recognizes outstanding completed design projects including façade renovation and or interior renovation efforts and infill construction. Market & Monroe is an adaptive reuse project that revitalized a long-abandoned pool hall into a premiere event venue. To rehab the building which dated to the late 1800s, the owners worked with a local architecture firm, AMBL Studios, and underwent a complete gut renovation of the structure and space, and a complete teardown and restoration of the storefront façade to address the failing structural members and restore the original historic detailing that had long been covered up. Acquisition, design, and construction put the total cost of this project at approximately $1 million.
• Reinvestment Award: The awards were given in recognition of Main Street Alabama programs that have reached major milestones in their district revitalization efforts. Economic impact numbers reported monthly by Athens Main Street were used in the calculation of this recognition. Athens Main Street’s district reinvestment of more than $30 million was recognized.

Also, at the event, Michelle Williamson was recognized as the Athens Main Street Hero.

The Main Street programs selected a Main Street Hero to honor an individual, business, or organization that made an outstanding contribution to their program.

“Michelle Williamson embodies the quote ‘We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give’,” Richardson said. “As a volunteer, there is no one that gives more of her time than Michelle. She is a long-time Athens Main Street Board Member, chairs the Promotion Committee, and volunteers for every Main Street event. She also plays key roles in over a dozen or more other non-profit activities in the community.”

For more information on Athens Main Street, visit www.athensmainstreet.org.