What is Main Street?

Texas Main Street celebrates 30 years in 2011!

Please ‘visit’ our Texas Main Street communities:
Texas Main Street Communities 2011 (pdf)

The Texas Main Street Program (TMSP) is part of the Community Heritage Development Division of the Texas Historical Commission. The TMSP is the state coordinating program that operates in affiliation with the National Main Street Center of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In 1981, following a pilot project of the national center that studied ways to address the decline of America’s downtowns, the TMSP became one of the first six state coordinating programs in the nation.

Today, there are 85 official Texas Main Street programs in cities and commercial neighborhood districts of all population sizes, from 2,000 to 200,000. Cumulatively since 1981, Texas Main Street communities have realized well over $2 billion in reinvestment into their historic downtowns, and have added more than 27,000 jobs and almost 7,000 new small businesses. These reinvestments show that significant economic development impact can be realized through historic preservation.

In Texas and all across the country, local programs operate under the National Main Street Center’s Four-Point Approach™ of organization, promotions, design and economic restructuring.

• Organization: Builds an effective coalition of public and private sector stakeholders, working in partnership with organizations who share an interest in the health of downtown and the community. Local activities in this area might include grant writing and/or enhancing public awareness of sound preservation practices.

• Promotions: Markets a unified, quality image of the business district as the center of activities, goods and services to retailers, shoppers, investors and tourists. Local activities in this area might include heritage festivals, retail promotions or image development.

• Design: Creates an attractive, coordinated and quality image of the downtown by capitalizing on unique physical assets and heritage. Local activities in this area might include building rehabilitations, property inventories and/or preservation ordinances.

• Economic Restructuring: Identifies new market opportunities for the commercial district, finds new uses for historic commercial buildings, and stimulates investment in property. Works to strengthen existing businesses; identify new business opportunities; find new, higher, more appropriate uses for vacant buildings; and/or intensify the uses of buildings . Local activities in this area might include business retention/recruitment or establishing local incentive programs.

There are many reasons why downtown revitalization is a crucial tool for enhancing the economic and social health of a community. In addition to being the most visible indicator of community pride and economic health, the historic downtown is also the foundation of community heritage. The historic buildings in a downtown are prime locations for the establishment of unique entrepreneurial businesses and can also be tourism attractors, all of which add to the community’s sales tax collections and property values. Today big-box development permeates the national landscape, making it even more important that communities be proactive in saving and using their historic spaces to avoid becoming featureless places.

For more information about why revitalizing downtown is so important, visit the National Main Street Center.

Main Street Benefits and Requirements

Main Street Applications are due the last working day of July each year.