On Friday, Oct. 18, dignitaries and leaders from rural Utah gathered on the Campus of Utah State University Eastern for the Utah State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) conference. This conference gave Mayor Mike Kourianos a chance to discuss the city’s partnership with Main Street USA and plans to revitalize the city’s Main Street.

To start, Mayor Kourianos shared a story of Bakesters, a new business that moved into Castle Rock Square. Kourianos asked the owner why he had chosen Castle Rock Square instead of Main Street. The owner responded with statistics first showing that the foot traffic in Castle Rock was much higher than it was on Main Street. He also explained that the landlord-tenant relationship at Castle Rock was much more desirable to the owner.

“ That was a game changer for me because we have building owners and then we have businesses that are leasing or renting from those building owners. The Visions aren’t coming together,” explained Kourianos,” There’s a disconnect. And how do we incorporate and bring those two together?” 

The solution? Collaborate with both the landlords and tenants in an equitable way that also attracts foot traffic to Main Street. One of the ways the city aims to accomplish this is through parking, which Kourianos stated was one of the hardest parts of operating Main Street. 

Another route to increasing foot traffic is through beautification, which the city has done through the flowers it displays and the decorative wraps placed around garbage cans. 

Speaking on the city’s collaboration with Main Street USA, Kourianos shared,” We don’t have all the solutions, but together we’ll come up with those solutions and work to implement them.”

The mayor then opened the floor to any questions that attendees may have regarding Main Street. One question was how would the revitalization of Main Street help attract youth who leave the area for schooling to return to the area. Mayor Kourianos answered,” Our youth council’s been very instrumental in that. I’ve always said, ‘I want you to sell our community through your eyes, not my eyes, my eyes are old.” He continued,” Back in September, our youth Council went down Main Street, cleaning all the weeds and telling those business owners that we appreciate their business on Main Street.”

He continued speaking on the benefit of the Youth City Council,” If you’re not using your association of government, you’re missing a big opportunity. Because there are your grant writers, there are the people that help you with events, they’ve been very instrumental and I wish they were here too to give them the credit they deserve.”

Another entity that the Mayor viewed as a cornerstone of revitalization was Utah State University Eastern,” We as a council and staff have been actively working to make this a college town … The college has been an anchor in advocating for that vision. One of those things is the billboard as you come in the first exit. We partnered with the university for that and it says,’ Welcome to Price. Home of USU Eastern’.”

The last aspect of revitalization Mayor Kourianos touched on was public participation,” The Day of Caring with the United Way was huge. We had probably over 300 people that cleaned up in the community and that was great.” Moving on, Kourianos questioned how to best encourage these volunteer efforts,” How do we help with the volunteers? We should be supporting those volunteers. I think that that’s the thing, we need to be supporting that movement. So then you have the energy and the excitement of participating. That’s what this is all about.”