Student Corner: NC Commerce Kicks Off the Downtown Strong Initiative

<p>The North Carolina Department of Commerce announced Tuesday that twenty-four communities  located in small and/or rural counties throughout the state (see Table, below) have been selected to participate in the new Downtown Strong Initiative of the N.C. Main Street & Rural Planning Center.</p> <p>The initiative was first unveiled in January 2019, when the N.C. Department of Commerce announced that it was investing $260,000 in the Downtown Strong Initiative, a spinoff of Governor Roy Cooper’s Hometown Strong Initiative for rural North Carolina. Hometown Strong Initiative, launched in February 2018, supports economic and community development efforts in rural counties across the state. The Initiative creates partnerships between state agencies and local leaders in rural communities to leverage existing resources in order to serve community needs, boost rural economies, and improve infrastructure. The Downtown Strong Initiative echoes the goals of the Hometown Strong Initiative by providing state support and expertise to local communities in rural parts of North Carolina.</p> <p>The communities chosen to participate in Downtown Strong were selected based on site visits conducted in 2018 and early 2019 by the Hometown Strong Initiative team as part of the state’s process for understanding the challenges faced by rural communities in reinvigorating their local economies. The priorities of the Downtown Strong Initiative — namely leadership development and education, building local government capacity, and downtown revitalization — were determined based on insights gleaned from conversations with leadership of the localities that work on an ongoing basis with N.C. Commerce.</p> <p>In order to achieve these goals, the Downtown Strong Initiative will assist local governments [...]</p>