Circleville – Uptown Circleville hosted a meet and greet at a newly renovated Zwiker House aimed at bringing muliple entities together to share one common goal, Downtown Circleville.
The event had representatives from Uptown Circleville, Pickaway Vistors Bureau, Pickaway County Chamber Pickaway County community foundation, Circleville Eagles, ArtsaRound, Blessings in a backpack, UFO Society, and Tootles Pumpkin Inn. Along with the groups around 60 people were in attendance.
Jeff Rawlins, President of Uptown Circleville board said that bringing these entities together that they want to be a, “hub for this energies.”
“So we’re so incredibly fortunate because you can go other towns and not see this, we’re so fortunate that we are all on the same page, the different organizations, groups, bodies, and administration. Everybody’s on the same page, everyone wants the same thing, and everyone has shared the same vision. Now the goal is how do we combine the strengths of that knowledge to a common goal into action? So we’re now I think, on the cusp of where we can start to see the action because of the synergy between all of these organizations.”
Rawlins says that there is momentum Downtown right now.
“I just think it was the momentum starting to build, you started to see some investments in the city of Circleville US-23, as well as downtown. I think that, that got sexy, that got exciting, then you start to see things happen. So that’d be my guess. Guess. Best guess on why things changed.
DBA chamber, the Visitor Bureau, Us and Mayor, and we’re all sitting there talking as if we’re all on one team, as if we’re family having a family meal, we’re all on that same page. These are these are things we’d like to see happen. This is gonna take all of us on the same page doing it. Nobody in that room said we’d like to run the lead on that we’d like to get credit for that. No one said that was a yeah, how can we do that? How can we go get that done? So super excited to see that. It’s just, it took a long time to get there.”
Jeff says that the DBA has now become part of Uptown and become one of the arms in a collaborative effort.
Local Entities including Uptown are aiming to make Circleville a destination location. They want to change people’s perspectives.
“I think it will become that community that City that people say hey, let’s go to Circleville. Versus well, all we have left, is Circleville. We want to change that and Circleville is the destination now.”
Rawlings talked about the revitalization of Ross Counties Chillicothe.
“I’m going to go back to Chillicothe fifteen years ago and look at it now. So much has changed, and so many local investors are putting money into the Downtown. Somebody two years ago came up with the idea to truck in dump trucks worth of sand into the Downtown and create a beach, and volleyball tournaments. That was an Idea, and it blew up a very popular event. We started having those also, the 3-on-3 tournament shuts down Court street and we play basketball in the streets. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we can look at some very successful cities that are doing certain things, and just mimic that, and put our spin on it. What works for the residents, here and the businesses here, we don’t need all these new ideas, we just need to deploy ones that are successful.”
Groups Rawlings said have voiced all kinds of ideas, Trolleys, zip lines, Alley beautifications, and historical renovations.
Rawlings said that the meet & Greet was a great example of collabration and what is happening in Downtown Circleville, while he looked around at the newly renovated Zwicker House.
The Zwicker House owned by the Moodys was renovated in just months after purchase. The 1909 location building went up for auction in Sepember of 2022, since then the Moodys have renovated it into a event space.
The Moodys said that future plans involve live events like comedy shows, wedding events, and live music. They said a collaboration between Buisness neighbor Ashlee Tait and event organizer will offer Circleville something it doesnt have. For more infomation on that go to the website. https://www.zwickerhouse.com/
