Cape Charles, Virginia – Cape Charles Community Enhancement Main Street Program has been awarded a 2018 Virginia Main Street Commercial District Affiliate grant in the amount of $7,000. These funds will be used to help develop an identifiable brand for Cape Charles. “We are excited to start building the foundation for marketing our community in a unified way”, said Shelly Gorman, Cape Charles Community Enhancement Program Manager.
The Commercial District Affiliate grant is a new program offered by Virginia Main Street, the state’s coordinating program for Main Street America. The grants are designed to provide funding for projects or services that will assist communities or organizations in achieving their downtown revitalization goals. These grants are available to the more than 70 Commercial District Affiliates that have registered with Virginia Main Street.
This year’s grantees include the towns of Boones Mill, Cape Charles, and Woodstock, as well as Albemarle County on behalf of the Crozet Downtown Initiative. “We are excited to provide these grants to assist our affiliate communities with their downtown revitalization efforts,” said Rebecca Rowe, program manager for Virginia Main Street.
Main Street America has been helping revitalize older and historic commercial districts for more than 35 years. Today, it is a network of more than 1,000 neighborhoods and communities, rural and urban, who share both a commitment to place and to building stronger communities through preservation-based economic development. Since 1980, communities participating in the program have leveraged more than $65.6 billion in new public and private investment, generated 556,960 net new jobs and 126,476 net new businesses, and rehabilitated more than 260,000 buildings. Main Street America is a program of the nonprofit National Main Street Center, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. To get updates about the Cape Charles Main Street initiatives and to volunteer, please see our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/MainStreetCapeCharles/.
This is wonderful for our town.
Before living here, I lived in Franklin TN for 20 years and had a bed & breakfast there. We became a Main Street community and it really boosted local small business and home prices.