Chillicothe — The nonprofit that officially represents downtown Chillicothe has asked the Ross County Commissioners to join them.
“Downtown Chillicothe Inc.” was represented by their president Ben Daughters, and program mangerTiffany Baldwin. They asked for one of the commissioners to sit on their board, and David Glass was recommended for that role.
I spoke with Daughters and Baldwin afterward. They said it takes really great collaboration between the private and public sector for a good downtown, and so the group wants better integration with local government – city administration, city council, and now county commissioners.
I also asked Daughters about his address to the March 10th Chillicothe Council review session on behalf of Downtown Chillicothe Inc., listing concerns about the ACGP plans for Yoctangee Park and the streets around it…including traffic circles.
He said they want to make sure the concerns of downtown business and property owners were being heard.
Daughters said one big concern was whether the amenities recommended for the park help the downtown: Are they not too far away? Will visitors loose interest if they can’t see the downtown?
He pointed out that the supposed downtown parking problem is mostly psychological – shoppers can often park closer to downtown shops than they can big-box shopping mall stores, but if they can’t see the door, they often think it’s too far. So, if visitors can’t see a destination, they often won’t go there.
(Note – this was before the recent decision to change the location of the proposed Welcome Center.)
I also asked if Downtown Chillicothe Inc. is a replacement for the Downtown Associates, which has had a history of starts and stops over several decades. Daughters said there have been various groups to advocate for the downtown, too many and confusing. He said they hope they now have unified representation and are on a path to success.
He said one thing they are working on is their “Downtown Chillicothe 2030” strategic plan, to ask what it will look like five or six years from now and to get a roadmap to that…and then on to 2040, 2050…
And then I asked Baldwin about the information kiosk that has been installed in front of the courthouse, but is not fully functional…yet. She said there were a lot of details still to work on like uploading all businesses and make maps of the downtown. She said it already took several months to get the electrical connection worked out. But in the end, visitors will be able to hold a smart phone up to it to upload data, and it will have multilingual capacity.
They said there is also a second kiosk, but with the coming of the ACGP for Yoctangee park, they are reassessing the location originally planned for the Paint Street park entrance.
Downtown Chillicothe (Inc) has a website and Facebook page. Hear Daughters and Baldwin in their own words below.
