About Main Street
Main Street La Junta
Colorado Main Street, a program at the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, is the state’s official Main Street America™ Coordinating Program. As such, it offers support for community-led downtown revitalization, helping cities and towns thrive by providing a customizable framework to focus efforts, energy, and resources to create a more vibrant community.
Proven revitalization strategies and needed organization help communities identify and leverage opportunities and resources. By focusing on current community strengths and assets, the Colorado Main Street Program is a catalyst to move historic downtowns move forward, one step at a time.
Main Street La Junta coalesces funding, data and information, and technical assistance to support vibrant downtowns statewide. The reinvestment statistics, reported quarterly, demonstrate the impact of community efforts in tandem with the customizable, accessible, and holistic services from the program.
National Main Street Program
Concerned about continuing threats to Main Streets’ commercial architecture and aware of the need to stimulate economic activity in small-city downtowns, the National Trust for Historic Preservation launched a community demonstration project (1977-1980) that resulted in the creation of the Main Street Four-Point Approach® and establishment of the National Main Street Center in Washington, D.C.
Main Street is a national program that has spanned three decades and taken root in more than 2,000 communities – a movement that has spurred $49 billion in reinvestment in traditional commercial districts, generated an average of $27 locally for each public dollar invested, led to a net gain of 94,176 new businesses, 417,919 new jobs, and 214,263 building rehabilitations, galvanized thousands of volunteers, and changed the way governments, planners, and developers view preservation.
Colorado Main Street
Colorado was selected by the National Main Street Center for a state pilot Main Street project in 1982 – 1985. Delta, Durango, Grand Junction, Manitou Springs and Sterling were Colorado’s Main Street communities in the initial program. The Colorado Department of Local Affairs administered this three-year pilot program.
Although the Main Street approach to downtown revitalization proved very successful in Colorado, the state discontinued the program after completing the three-year pilot project. Several communities continued to implement Main Street and downtown revitalization programs without the benefit of a statewide coordinating program, while other local programs were discontinued. Between 2000 and 2010, Downtown Colorado Inc. administered the Colorado Main Street Program.