Downtown Tyler Thrives With Creative Energy
After 20 years in the Texas Main Street program, downtown Tyler has a new look and a renewed energy.
Under the direction of Beverly Abell, a veteran Main Street manager with award-winning efforts in Colorado and Oklahoma, Main Street Tyler and Heart of Tyler Inc. are feeling just fine, thank you.
The public-private partnership formed between the city and HoT in 2008 has been reaping results, says Abell.
"Each does what it does best. It has provided us with a lot of programmatic stability, while putting a real emphasis on downtown and recognizing it for the economic necessity that it is."
Part of that emphasis has been on what Abell describes as a "living learning lab" for adaptive reuse of old buildings. "We have our home right on the street, right on the square," Abell says of the program's 2009 move to its new home.
"On one side of the building is our office for the Heart of Tyler Inc. and Main Street Tyler, but on the other side is Gallery Main Street, a municipally supported art gallery that is administered by our program volunteers and the Downtown Tyler Arts Coalition."
It's that emphasis on the arts that is really making downtown's pulse race these days. Gallery Main Street features juried art exhibits with works by professional and hobbyist artists. A new show goes up every six weeks, and every show is juried and managed by professional artists who volunteer their services with DTAC.
DTAC is expanding, working with groups in film-making, theater, music, photography – all areas of the arts, Abell says.
"This all ties back to Tyler 21 and the plank of the arts in the master plan for the city of Tyler," Abell says.
Public investment is a catalyst to private investment, she says. Proof? A new private art gallery and a new coffee shop with an emphasis on art are new additions to downtown.
"This is also on the heels of another major arts development downtown, and that is the adaptive reuse of the old Liberty Theater as the new home of the East Texas Symphony Orchestra," Abell says.
With Friday art walks, downtown concerts, original art banners and special window displays, Downtown Tyler is artfully in the middle of the activity. And, as Abell points out, that's just on the arts end.
Downtown Tyler is capturing opportunity with the thousands of visitors who come for the Azalea Festival each year, holding the Main Street Flower Market in the Goodman Museum, and continuing with traditional promotional events.
What's in the future?
"For downtown as a whole, I see more emphasis on property rehabilitation," Abell says. "I think we'll see more people take advantage of the 20 percent investment tax credit. They are seeing more and more the economic advantages of being downtown."
Constant evaluation and program tweaking are critical to a successful downtown program, Abell says. "If you're static, you're dead. No matter how good your program is, you've got to respond and retool to move with the times. We're doing that."
