ARTICLE
Main Street Now 2025
Takeaways from the conference
April 7 – 9, 2025
Philadelphia, PA
Jeremy Murdock, from our Downtown Strategies team, recently returned from the 2025 Main Street Now Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He came home we’re brimming with fresh ideas and renewed energy to bring back to our client communities.
“I always walk away energized and excited to share the tips, tricks, and trends that I learned with our client communities,” said Jeremy. “Main Street is a close network of practitioners that have a passion for downtowns and genuinely want to help each other.”
Topics
- The Power of Storytelling
- Public and Private Sectors Working Together
- Adapting with Creative Ideas
- Start Small, Start Now
1.
The Power of Storytelling
One of the strongest themes throughout the conference was the necessity of creating emotional attachments between visitors and downtown areas. This emotional connection transforms casual visitors into loyal advocates for your community.
Social media has become an essential tool for downtown success, but simply posting business hours isn’t enough. The most engaging communities are using these platforms to highlight creative and unique stories that make their downtown special. These authentic narratives resonate with audiences and drive meaningful engagement.
2.
Public and Private Sectors Working Together
City leaders must focus on creating downtown environments that are engaging and vibrant – attractive to entrepreneurs, investors, visitors, and locals alike. The conference emphasized that a downtown’s vibrancy is key to creating special places where people want to visit, live, and start businesses.
The role of cities and Main Street organizations isn’t to do everything themselves, but rather to create a foundation that sparks private sector investment. Public efforts should be catalysts that encourage and facilitate private stakeholders to get involved.
3.
Adapting with Creative Ideas
For local businesses to thrive, they must adapt to current economic trends that focus on convenience, experience, and integration of technology. The most successful downtown businesses are those that understand and respond to changing consumer preferences.
“The most creative idea I heard was from a community in Kansas that throws a ‘Business Shower’ for new businesses opening in their downtown,” Murdock shares. “Similar to a baby shower but with office supplies, encouraging notes, and a celebration of their accomplishment.”
This type of creative community building strengthens the bonds between businesses and residents.
4.
Start Small, Start Now
Perhaps the most repeated message at the conference was the importance of starting small. “Even the best success stories started small,” notes Murdock. “Starting small but starting now” was referenced throughout the conference as the key to sustainable downtown revitalization.
An interesting insight from the conference was that underutilized storefronts can negatively impact a downtown just as much as vacant ones. This highlights the importance of not just filling spaces, but ensuring they contribute meaningfully to the downtown ecosystem
Looking Forward
Our Downtown Strategies team is excited to incorporate these new ideas into our work with client communities. We believe that by focusing on these principles – creating emotional connections, telling authentic stories, fostering vibrant environments, adapting to economic trends, starting small, sparking private investment, and building creative communities – we can help downtowns across the country reach their full potential.
About Downtown Strategies
Downtown Strategies, a division of Retail Strategies, exists to provide realistic, implementable strategies to communities for revitalizing their downtowns. Led by a team of former downtown revitalization practitioners and real estate experts, our combination of real-world experience, plus expertise in real estate and retail uniquely qualify us to assist communities with backfilling vacancies, increasing tourism, and enhancing the sense of place in their downtowns. Serving rural communities in 25 states, Downtown Strategies is the leading national firm for downtown revitalization planning, emphasizing real estate and retail.
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