PLAINFIELD — A group of community-minded individuals have come together to make the downtown Plainfield area more appealing.
HistoricPlainfield Town Center(HPTC) is currently working to earn its 401C3 status as a non-profit organization. It’s getting a lot of steam under the leadership of Mike Brouillard.
“I’m a believer in community involvement,” Brouillard said. “I graduated from Leadership Hendricks County and was looking for a place to use my new leadership skills.”
He felt downtown Plainfield was a great place to start.
“There are Main Street Programs all over trying to help the old style downtowns,” Brouillard said.
He’s joined efforts with several other individuals to get the ball rolling here.
Jill Sprague is also involved in the effort. She has first-hand experience with the Plainfield Town Center through her job with the town’s planning department.
“We’ve defined the town center from the bridge to Sal’s,” she said. “It also goes a little south on Vine and a little north on East Street.”
The organization has a blog that may be accessed online at pfmainstreet.wordpress.com.
They’ve concentrated their efforts by modeling them after the Indiana Main Street program which is a four-point approach: design, organization, promotions, and economic restructuring.
“We’ve been working on this for about a year and wanted to make sure we had the backing of the businesses,” Brouillard said.
Business owners were invited to a meeting at the municipal building earlier this week.
“The economy is in the dumpster and the fact that the road is torn up has been bad for you, I’m sure,” Brouillard said. “But eventually the road will get done and by then we would like our promotional items to kick in.”
Several businesses from downtown were represented at the meeting. All those who attended agreed that the organization was well worth the work and that they would participate in activities to promote the area.
“We are a volunteer group,” Brouillard said to business and shop owners. “We won’t do this unless you really want to participate.”
Kent McPhail, executive director of the Plainfield Chamber of Commerce, said he would support any activities the group organized. He even offered to personally pay the dues for Historic Plainfield Town Center if they could get three of the downtown businesses to join the chamber. There were three shop owners who quickly agreed to join.
McPhail said as chamber members they’ll be able to promote their events on the organization’s website.
The group discussed a few events they could work on to promote the area and decided the first one would be a Halloween decorating contest between the downtown shops.
They decided that any businesses participating should have their store front decorated by Oct. 25 for judging.
The shopkeepers and building owners were encouraged to speak to their neighbors about the group and ask them to come to the next meeting.
The Historic Plainfield Town Center set its next meeting for 7 p.m. Sept. 22 at the Plainfield Municipal Building. For more information, contact Sprague by calling 839-5261 ext. 216 or by e-mailing to jsprague@town.plainfield.in.us.
brenda.holmes@flyergroup.com
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