Main Street Selma ready for busy summer
Published 8:02 pm Friday, June 9, 2017
Main Street Selma, an organization aimed at revitalizing downtown Selma, is looking to get more done in the coming months.
Clay Carmichael, president of Main Street Selma, said after taking a brief step back they are ready to get rolling on several summer projects and increasing membership.
“We kind of stepped back a little bit. We wanted to concentrate more on projects and less on meetings,” Carmichael said.
“It seemed like everything was just meeting oriented, and you just don’t get anything done in a meeting, so we’re going to have less meetings and more action.”
Main Street Selma is currently finishing up one of its projects from last year.
They are trying to find a permanent home for the Jeffrey the Ghost sculpture created by Charlie “Tin Man” Lucas.
The sculpture was part of a social media campaign where Jeffrey the Ghost appeared at different businesses in downtown Selma throughout October.
One of the projects Carmichael said Main Street is working on is getting businesses and entrepreneurs involved in Operation Hope, who is partnered with Regions Bank to offer financial counseling.
“It’s a good thing for helping small businesses, new businesses and entrepreneurs, and we’re just trying to give them an outlet to get in touch with the downtown businesses and vice versa just trying to connect them,” Carmichael said.
“They have some classes and stuff they’re doing like money management, small business workshops and stuff like they’re going to be doing over the summer.”
The organization is also working on planning some events for the summer and fall and getting businesses heavily involved with them.
“We have some events we’re planning for this summer and fall that aren’t necessarily our events,” he said. “We want to get the downtown businesses involved in the events and partner with some events that are already going on just to try to bring another aspect to it.”
There are also promotions in the works for “Downtown Dollars” that can be spent at any store downtown associated with the promotion to get people into stores.
Another project Main Street Selma is working on is getting art and historic images put into storefront windows.
“We’re looking at kind of helping clean up some of the store fronts … mainly the empty storefronts and get some historic images and artistic images in the blank windows, so that when people drive through town they aren’t seeing a blank building,” Carmichael explained.
“They may see an image of Anne Strand’s art or an old building, just something that’s eye-catching and a little more attractive.”
Main Street is also working on getting businesses to buy into what they are doing by becoming a member.
“We’re kind of getting kicked off on our membership campaign because we’ve got to have the budget to do some of the things that we want to do in the future,” he said.
“If we want to keep going, then we’ve got to make sure people are buying into what we’re doing.”
Any business interested in becoming a member can visit the Main Street Selma office located inside the welcome center on Broad Street or email mainstreetselma@gmail.com.