all the different activities that are going on in the vibrancy of downtown and seeing friends and just getting together but you know we all know those kind of things don't just happen that there has to be some kind of design and some kind of work behind all of that and so we are thrilled today to have our assistant city manager greg robinson with us who has was really deeply involved in all that came about to make highlands downtown so such a great place to be so we're glad you could take a and businesses kind of seemed a little dilapidated and maybe people hadn't invested in their business as far as face lifts or whatever and what happened that what what kind of things did people do to in the state of michigan in being a main street community actually one of the original seven main street communities in the state yeah and so when i came here it was new there was a lot of interest in it a lot of u speculation a lot of skepticism about it all is well but you know i can tell you that even before i came here for decades this community has been interested in downtown and making efforts with the chamber of commerce and others involved with the chamber and store owners and property owners downtown really for many decades this community has had an interest in downtown it has made various improvements so when i came in  four there was a main street committee already established they hired me so it was a group of people with interest in the community they were store owners they were property owners or just a great mix of people that came together to make another effort in improving downtown and like you just commented there was a period especially in this country i think from the one nine hundred sixty s sixty's on where shopping malls became more prevalent we weren't immune to that in holland and when i came there wasn't really a shopping mall other thing going to grand rapids but two were planned and i think it was in one thousand nine hundred seven or one nine hundred eighty eight when both of them were put in operation at the same time if i remember correctly it was about a million were feet of retail space new retail space put into this community downtown is extremely concerned because there's testimonies all over the country of downtown's that did not do very well when those shopping centers came in so there was a lot of concern here in the national main street center then was put into place or the main street program to see what we could do to strengthen our downtown to avoid what had happened in many many others so we kind of had this huge cloud of competition gathering and watching other places go downstream without paying attention to what we know if we just allow things to happen that they're gradually going to move toward disorder that's one of the what the second law of thermodynamics yeah so we've got a we've got to work to keep things going the right direction that was great too that we have business leaders in this area who knew that in order for them to have attract happy employees to for their families to flourish that you need to have healthy shopping and a place for people to come that's family friendly and and all of that and so that's part of what motivated their involvement as well and it's a strong feeling that downtowns is a window to the economic health of the community and i think you know when you travel to different places oftentimes when you think of that community you think of their downtown you can just start naming off whatever communities you want to start of saginaw traverse city marquette detroit in arbor oftentimes the first thing that comes to mind is downtown so you know with ours it was in a pretty good shape in the mid one nine hundred eighty six when main street started but with the concern about the new shopping centers coming in we wanted to keep that we keep it that way certainly so and so a number of people in the community seeing that value thinking about we need to maintain this downtown because it reflects on our entire community there are a lot of people that got behind it but there  understandably a lot of people said let's wait a minute let's take a look at what's going on let's listen let's maybe experience or learn from experience of others in our downtown they'll go first and then we'll see how they are so there was a lot of that taking place also search so what kind of choices did this committee go through with how said they improve downtown how do you face this competition what can we do it make it stay by brand and attractive and feel new enough for people to want to be there we followed the main street center approach to a t it was a four with a called a four point approach organizing the downtown and putting together an organizational structure that strong and sustainable design aspects of downtown the promoting downtown and then a fourth was called economic structuring and it was really what goes on behind the store fronts what do you want to occur on these properties what needs to occur in the downtown to make it sustainable to have people want to work here to have people want to visit to shop to live it to make it just a full service type of location a destination location so the basic economics of the downtown so this community really embraced all four of those aspects and it's interesting i didn't just tell you story when i in community i was in before when i left that position and people knew that i was coming to holland there was some skepticism on people i talked to i had a couple of people say to me good luck you know it's a very conservative community good luck getting them to you know do the types of things that you're probably going to need to do and we wish you well kind of comment so when i came here i wasn't quite sure what to expect but i quickly found the opposite that when people bought into a vision they got behind it and really evidence today is clear on the the buy in to those initial thoughts and everything that's happened decades later yeah they didn't know about that entrepreneurial heart that they i think it was something in downtown back in the mid one nine hundred eighty s was a lot different than what it is today in really have to take a look at the number before and after photos to really grasp the difference and then i think the design then and in the way downtown operated then it was good for that time period probably a couple decades before that but for what downtown was facing at that time we had to make some substantial changes and so they in order to address the big p l malls where everybody can be indoors and enjoy shopping like there in a building there i had heard that one of the ideas was to put like a huge dome over downtown and turn it into a big endo direction we were heading now that was really the opposite of what we're trying to do but the good thing about aluminum siding was that it was put on in a very inexpensive manner it was very easy to take off and much of what was underneath was still there wow yeah so have the other option they could have gone with was completely modernize it and you know make it all look like it was made today and you want to be there but the problem with that is seven years later you've got to remode always trying to look like you're the latest thing instead of thinking who are we and how can we be the best us we can be right and so that's that's such a great princip to go back to our roots and why don't we celebrate the quality we started with with the brick structures and to discover it and celebrate it and i just so appreciate your leadership in all of that and working with all these different groups of people to embrace who we are and and make that better for people from now on now there was another little idea that got thrown in here at some point with and tell you there are a couple dynamics not only was this a new idea that we did not know of any other place in the country and couldn't find any other place in the country to use as a model and all we had were people in the holland area or maybe some companies  in the midwest that maybe had done this on a very small scale on their walkway into the building like i said on their driveway yeah we did leading into the rides very small applications that now we're talking about doing an entire downtown but it was primarily it was a pretty simple system but it is the other dynamic that came into play as we were in the middle of what we called streetscape back in one nine hundred eighty seven if you can imagine this today the entire downtown was a street was torn up there wasn't any concrete to be found from building from the building front ok it was all dirt and piles of dirt and for store owners who might see this program think about your ability to do business during that time you know your concerns about your ability to do business we had would sidewalks you know at that time plywood sidewalks to get people into the to the store so and then while we were doing that and in the midst of that we knew that there were two new shopping centers opening up and you know in the area everybody's where there is difference comes in and says how about if we do snow melt you know we're in the midst of a project and all the sudden about if we do snow in the timing though to do snow melt was great because all the streets were torn up anyway so we didn't have the demolition costs and we're going to be putting it back together but we had to change our plans to put it back together because there'd be more brick required because of this there what we had planned so so all of the kima gather in a very short timeframe it was not unanimous remember the vote on council was not unanimous and there were those in the community that had some real questions about it including our board of public works at first but really it was some ingenuity on their part that kind of pushes into the real realm of confidence by i don't remember the gentlemens i think the republican woman working over the power plant who came up with an idea that really right right and so very few people could have championed something like that at that stage of the city's project but so to have him step forward and it really does fit with other principles that we've had  using our natural resources using the leftovers from the power plant the location the power plant with downtown and so it was something that could birth out of a groundwork that we already had we just didn't know it right yeah so  so exciting in trying to figure out how to address the future to look back to what has worked in the past and what are the principles behind it that we can use for future success right so then getting businesses to come to downtown i know you don't just put up a little sign and say say all we got a storefront and you also had to think about like apartments above the stores that we didn't have that before either did we  here's another try to put this in perspective ok we talked about the streets being totally torn up just picture the dirty moans of her store from the storefront one that was done we had in the the malls opened up the two malls opened up in the holland area approximately fifty percent of our first levels of our lower levels in the downtown were vacant so try to imagine it today about half of them were vacant and nearly all of the upper levels nearly all the upper levels were vacant try to think of that today homes so that in a try to convince some of the building owners that they could make money off of the upper levels it was up in those upper levels with  tape measures trying to help them put together some financial strategy for making it work and i remember some pigeons being in some of the spaces in some of those spaces not being people being in for many many many years just in selling like decades out success to some of these people right that you know you want to invest today and then it's going to pay off and to try to set that vision in the middle of the sandbox ahead going called eight st i yeah i can imagine how hard it was for people to have that long term vision and put money behind it it's not like they're just saying all about being nice someday it's like i have to pay things today yes right and there's a good time  that i certainly didn't know what was going to work either so you know if there was a major bridge was there they were spending the money yeah i was talking with them about how it might work but i had no guarantee that if they turned it into a residential space so you know they could run it and that was a situation downtown today you know it's hard to find a place to rent downtown or that kind of thing so in what really what it took was the vision of a lot of people and  certainly initially people to say ok i'll give this a try and into real life some success and some other people you know i could name dozens and dozens of people and i'm really tempted to start naming  off people who were so involved in so took the risk but i know i will forget some very very important people you know that have contributed so much but people went out on a limb so that could go out on a limb they had the resources to be patient and wait on him to see their success others who did not but all together what they did at that time and what people continue to do today is result and what we have had you know i my role was i was the worker for the main street committee in a representative for the relief of property owners in the store owners and so forth downtown i was there worker others in many many cases  ones who came up with the ideas and it was my role to try to make them reality and working with other people but i came away with a high level of respect for the property owners in the retailers and the office owners downtown from the risks they take every single day to provide the kind of downtown that we have and we take it for granted we go to these places and enjoy the food at the restaurants we go and all the different things that we enjoy about downtown and in the risks that they take to do what they do is is really something that was news to me and i used to have this to this to a high level of respect for the risk that they continue to take to make a downturn just replace that they really understand that success just doesn't happen i don't magically that you have to keep building and past success and work even harder to continue to build it and that's what they've been doing with assessing themselves as business owners to help pay for everything that happens downtown i mean free parking is not a free right and snow melt is not free and so all of those things that we enjoy come from taxes well assessments they pay on top of their regular property taxes right it's real and like this new downtown manager position that they have created as a part of combining the p s is the principal shopping district  association and the downtown development authority into one position kind of similar to what you're main street was position was way back when is all funded through those assessments  in the area that's right you know it's an excellent point and in one of the testimonies to the to their appreciation of the value of paying those assessments is every year when we hold the hearings right over public hearings how many times yeah do we have people come in and complain or express concerns about that it's it's rare or that we do so they recognize the value in the staff that works downtown you know that some of the funds that those assessments generate to go to pay for their hard working group they have been for decades and they've been working at it frankly for long you know i only worked downtown for like five and a half years you know it was a long time ago yeah so it's those five and a half years since so many people so many staff members and so forth of dedicated so much to what to their downtown yeah it's really great to see people coming together and for the joy set before them really are willing to dig in and make it happen and be creative embrace new ideas i mean that i sculpting contest early and street performers things and you know there's so many things that have happened that we just take a take for granted as a part of the landscape socialization and how in michigan right they all started from you know and i do get so it's great to see that kind of thing come together and we so appreciate all that you have done greg to help this company heather and you willingness to accept a position too conservative how in michigan to help us become such a development capital in the world really in so many people's heads have turned into what is going on a how in michigan and why is this downtown so successful and i know you've entertained groups from other places that have tried to figure that out and want to replicate it where they're from you know that's really well you know i just it was one of the best moves i ever made for my career and for my family actually whole it's been just a wonderful place for us to go to just to be here and i played just a small part of it was really young woman knows you don't so much more but i'm just happy to be able to your small stories with you you know well thank you so much greg so many times we know something was behind it what is happening in it's just great to talk to an eyewitness about what was really going on behind the scenes and there's  grateful to have you a part of the team and i feel the same way about living in holland it's just been a wonderful place to raise our family and being able to give back to a community that you love and enjoys is just a very fulfilling way to spend your life you know for sure and thank you so much so we're going to also go from city hall in this little story to actually being downtown and talking with some of the downtown orders about what's going on and they say so stay tune and so how did you get into the mines a little business restaurant downtown called til midnight and i worked for them for a while and they decided to close their bakery that was in this location and offered me the space at a business plan i tell the fifty's maybe early sixty's and then kind of had a lot of different things go through it so one such change into a food service location we were able to kind of work with that a little bit and expand this way over here project that keeps going yeah yeah like thank you tom you're railing out there that never really had an explanation other than this used to be a gas station right and the other day when i went by i'm like wow what a great idea to you do and the use of what's been there before and giving it a whole design artistic element that's that's a great way to have a little talking point downtown allen i think so yeah yeah so what do you like about downtown holland that you think can straight into the shuttle so it was nice but i think that the biggest change to downtown and i've seen in the last ten years is more versatility in that the kinds of businesses and more options for dining and for for nightlife whether that's so that any anyone of any age can come down here and whether they live in town whether they're from somewhere else and there's usually something to do and it's very very rare for me to hear someone say that they didn't find something that they they fell in love with and it's different for everyone yeah that kind of changed over the last decade definitely these i work with high school students at city hall and there's like oh there's nothing to do now they took that off their long term plan because they said there's always something to do we should know bother with that that's a good thing but yeah so if you had never been how i do or if someone you ran into someone somewhere who had never been here what would you tell them that it's very rare when you're going out in the world to find a downtown that has very few close storefronts and i think that that says a lot about the fact that people want to do business here and people want to offer things and i think that that's the biggest selling point they don't talk about is besides having  on and things for people to do is that it's very very obvious that the people who who run businesses here want to be here and i think that the kind of independent business spirit that is downtown is spread out further in the community and you're seeing a lot a lot more local and independent businesses popping up throughout holland throughout the areas around holland and i don't shop at the big chain stores and i love having this many options for places and i think that that's always a talking point that gets people interested in how and when i have the opportunity to talk about it yeah it's not anywhere usa and a lot of unique things lot of energy a lot of entrepreneurial spirit in in the businesses and in the you know the corporations as well as local businesses downtown that creative mind power right exactly yeah well it's wonderful to be able to have a little talk with you in the middle of all your busy expansion here and all that's happened it's just a great all original now we've gone through several phases redoing repurposing and here we have been we're going through one right now doing a million dollar renovation our kitchen and out back for a beer garden more family bathrooms so we're constantly evolving by where these friends of yours that started that there were no hope students as well couple of years older than me and i didn't know me at the time but through volunteering we really got to know each other and we just kind of pushed on it's very social there's a lot of great activities going on people are very friendly you know it's hard to walk down the street not have someone say hi do you love the fact it's good to know a lot of the people and just very persona going to work to keep all four think the weather if you went away somewhere and ran into somebody who had never been to al and didn't really thought maybe it was the netherlands when you said you're from how to talk to them about this and tell them that it's a real clean fun city there's lots to do the lakes beautiful and i don't think there's a dull moment around here with bike trails and golf and that's part of the reason i love it here so i would encourage him to come out meet some of the here dave to give us and here we are at our next stop downtown holland karla's place this is gorgeous cozy place you've got going here carla we're here with carla shy thea fully who is in charge of this whole business and it is your business right you started it from scratch and what crowd did you come up with this idea and kind of what is your main idea i started the business over eight years ago and my background is business related insurance and private investigation so i want to combine my business along with my creativity and my goal was to have a unique gift bo so i feel like i've achieved it so it's just ever evolving ever changing it's been really fun we have about forty to sixty different artists that are local or around the united states and we carry their product along with other companies that we represent so the investigation part is let's see what else is out there that people might like to put in their carriages or their homes and that's done creatively and a kind of unique design yes and we have on a sewing machine here so we saw a lot of things we tap into like the sorority market from the whole cow so they can come down here and say we'd like this so that may to a certain extent ok have a limited creativity but like we do a lot of like sorority banners buntings for them they can bring a t shirt in and w things of that nature that we make for the whole college yell wow see you decorate rooms or houses or people good good job yeah yeah well that's a great use a great color all through here and  the kind of to inspire people about what else they could do at their place i bet it's inspiring and it's also to just realizing we live in michigan and we have some dull days yeah and i feel like people in michigan like color and like to be embraced by that so we like to choose wide variety from the color palette yeah this kind of feels like a celebration of life in here and that's cool so you are part of downtown  highland what do you feel how do you feel about being downtown how and what's good about this location do you think i love downtown how and i love the energy i love that in the winter time that we have the heated sidewalks to see everybody walking around whether it's with their animals whether it's from so i love the variety of the community such as the whole college today versus we have warm friends freedom village you see your regulars that are walking you know whether it's with their little walkers or so it's just really fun to see the interaction of the different ages the just the uniqueness business is to the entrepreneurial kind of thing and how did you get the vision for this business i went to a program in grand rapids it's called grogram and so i went to that worked on a business plan is a totally different business plan but it just when people always came over to my home they always loved it the comfort of it they always wonder where i bought everything and always was a good gift giver so just kind of morphed  try my own business and it's just been fun define the different unique little items to work on that you kind of crafted your own passion into a business yes that's what's so great about unique businesses downtown how and it comes out of a person in a vision and passion yes and what's fun about it is that there is a person behind you know many of the businesses here when you walk into the shops but the person is there and it just connect you more and it makes you to me it makes you want to support them because you're already in that individual their family and what they bring to the community keeping it local yeah so what if you ran into somebody somewhere sometime had never been to holland michigan never heard of it what would you tell them i would tell like what i hear all the time in the store about just the people are just so surprised of being a small town and the variety of the shops of the friendliness of the community people just the beauty brother it's during the christmas time with the holiday decor whether it's the tulip time or just you know spring time with the flowers i would tell him that i feel like the downtown holland is just the hub of an area during the summer there's the farmer's market there are the street performers it seems like we always have a parade going on so i would tell them just what i hear over and over again of just that there's a lot of different genie shops restaurants and just how many people i see here that say that they want to move here and come up with a game plan whether it's  retirement whether it's through their kids through college that they just really foam walls were the community yeah the kind of discover a world they didn't know about and maybe when they come here yeah it is a real treasure yes we need to work hard to continue its  success and continue to patronize the businesses that do so much for the livelihood of this whole area yeah so we're thrilled that you could take time out of your day carla to share your vision and downtown holland with us and it's been great to be a in your shop and get that real home feeling so thank you so much carla thanks nancy for coming yeah and we're on to our next location wonderful so we're glad to have him to give us a little background on this wonderful place to have a bite to eat or something to drink so how long have you been a part of this oh my been here about sixteen years the restaurant started in  which was shortly after edgar and elsa prince got involved with downtown in doing a lot of the renovation of the streetscape and putting in the heated streets and things like that so we opened in ninety one which was just after that happened so it was a great time meanwhile yeah we're at the very beginning as we were in the very beginning and it's been great ever since we opened two years later we opened eighty four east which is three blocks down the street and then in two the twenty some years we've been here it's the community has grown so much and changed so much we we actually have employees that have been here seventeen eighteen years that is i mean the rest yeah it's amazing we have one couple that actually met here went to college got married they still work here part time i was seventeen years going to be hiring their kids pretty happily ever yet really is in a few years ago we started changing here you know michigan's a great beer state you know we have new holland brewing in now we have another brewery that just opened on the street so a couple years ago we got more involved in the craft beer so we now have twenty eight taps a and he was a bartender for a city for east and while he was working for us he developed the business plan along with brett to open new and so it's it's a lot of entrepreneurs downtown which is really what makes downtown so unique operated so that's pretty unique yeah it is no no starbucks not that we don't like starbucks but you know the coffee shops the ice cream shops all of them are locally owned and operated which is really pretty cool yeah they have owners right involved in  yeah and the money stays in that money i mean their unity yes you know it's very very important and you know it couldn't have been done without people like the princes when they first had the vision to say hey let's make this what it used to be you know fifty sixty years ago yeah and you know to this day you know the mirror corporation is still very committed to downtown and you know it's developed so much where the p s t which is the principal shopping district in there very involved with the ambassador program which we started last year yeah which is what i thought oh yeah i don't know if you we're familiar with that or not but it actually puts local people on the street that are embassadors for downtown they have hats and name tags and you know the visitors that's very unique you don't see that in too many towns very welcoming and informational and people don't have to wonder where am i and where my going it really is and you know there's very few towns the size of holland that could have a gallery walk well we've been having a gallery walk i think for probably the better part of twenty years in downtown and we have a lot of galleries locally owned galleries there that have michigan products in it you know everything from the shaker messenger with their food program and their crafts morning hands i mean it's just amazing the variety we have downtown we really really value the arts and design in this area and you can see that in the way music is followed in the way the arts are celebrated and all of that helps business in the long run it makes a quality of life here that people really appreciate don't you think oh definitely and you know the fact that we're so close to the water i mean we have great parks in holland you know you you could spend the whole day downtown but marinas we really have it all it's it's very unique you know it's a wonderful place when people come here you know if you were meeting someone somewhere who had never been to holland michigan you'd probably be telling them those things right oh exactly and one of the things i would tell  they come is it when you go in the shops and when you talk to the owners and the people that are running the shops you know introduce yourself because one of the things you'll find here is you get to know the owners you know what if you're looking for something and they don't have it they'll either get it for you or they'll tell you somebody else in town that has it right which you care about the party exactly you don't get that in a lot of places you certainly don't get that in a mall yet so it's something very unique in it's the experience i think that people come here for i mean if you go to just about anywhere in the country you mention holland people know about it it's amazing you know my daughter lives overseas in all the time she'll show mention all you know how in michigan people were all i was there almost to me feeling but let's celebrate the past and building on that that's the cool thing about downtown all the buildings for the most part have been here one hundred plus years yeah this building we have pictures on the wall behind me when it was a bakery back in the turn of the century when it was a pharmacy you know there was hotels across the street and a lot of the buildings as you noticed as you walk around town have the plaques on there explaining you know the age of the we always remember our roots and the quality of our roots and that's that's that's fine down here makes color a great place to live and visit yeah well thank you so much mike for you a long time to meet with us and give us a little feel for this great place well here we are at our last but certainly not least the location we're at bottle drug and apathic you're a gift shop here on the corner of eighth and river which is a wonderful place with all kinds of great advantage and we are here with sharon fisher who is the owner owner of this wonderful facility this great store and drugstore right yeah so we're glad that we could take a few minutes to talk about what it's a been like being a business owner downtown and how did you get the idea for a place like this this has been in my family for fifty years model drugs been in holland since the early one nine hundred my dad bought it when i was five and so it's been a long time i'm a firm asus business owner and two about everything under the sun it's kind of like running a family isn't hearing much so do anything that anything it used to be done yes and you've also been very involved in downtown and all its development over these years you've seen a lot of changes much so yeah so do you remember when your dad bought this place to refine it had a sort of fun when i was a kid who did come down here and was wonderful yeah so really got in your blood you're very much you know about the second grade i decided i was going be a pharmacist and executed oh wow that's great and then you came back and bought it from your parents i wonder for about fifteen years they sold it to me as they were ready to retire and just carried on the tradition wow so did you always have this much square footage we didn't the store has expanded we had the original part of the drugstore and where we're standing used to be a barber shop and to the north of us used to be used to be our own by army surplus yeah little pharmacy with the biggest shop wow and it's nice to have that service for people downtown and i'm sure the people that live right around here really appreciate that cater to a lot of groups actually the people that live in this area yeah that's wonderful so  you're a part of downtown how and and you certainly bought into the vision of downtown very early i had what would you say about about downtown hal and down town highland is unique because it has so many independent businesses  have good foot traffic there's wonderful cooperation between the city and downtown store owners it's just amazing i think it's a unique partnership yeah kind of independent businesses but we come together to get to work very much so still and yeah there's a lot of planning that goes on to make things happen at the right time and it's paid off especially in times when the economy is doing its best you know it looked like whoa whoa who is going to go downtown for awhile  exactly i remember when we were going through streetscape and you had to walk on boards to get through to the stores it was pretty scary yeah it was as its owner business well the reason that the mall went out of business and we're thriving it's kind of a nice testimony to what the city did a long time ago and then they kind of went back to the beginning of this area and of this downtown with the design of the buildings and so we are who we have been and who we want to be in the future we're trying to embrace yeah  so if you were someplace else if you ever get out of here well you ok i love the name don't people yeah and if they've never heard of holland michigan what would you tell that holland is a unique place we have a lot of it's a unique place because we have tourism we have industry and we have a college it makes a strong year round which is really different for the business climate for live in the syria it's really nice for multi generations it's a great place to raise kids you've got wonderful schools it's a great place to do business because there's a lot of jobs and a great place to retire because it's amazing housing for the seniors so we get the best of a lot of the world here there is so much to be thankful for isn't there it's so hard to believe you don't appreciate it to you step out of the city realize every community doesn't have that yeah right fortunate absolutely we could take a left granted living here and much that doesn't happen automatically there's a lot of work behind the scenes of people coming together and a lot downtown owners are paying for for us to enjoy the melted snow and that actually parking in like the street performers and those kind of things we pay to make it happen but it's is so nice perk for everybody you know  seeds passive feelings with downtown and makes us all community yeah it does bring people together you know what we saw appreciate you taking time out of your busy business owners schedule to give us a little behind the scenes look at what it's like to be the owner of mild drugstore and have a kerry gift shop so thank you so much and he's great and we're so glad that you have tuned in for this whole fashion and downtown holland and where it started and where it is today and hopefully a little bit about where it's going and we really would love for you to check and line at downtown holland that com you can look it up and see what else is going on and all the events are usually put on there and so you can be up on all the exciting things that are happening through our marketing department for downtown and if you'd like to watch this segment again or any of the other city connection programs that we have done you can go to video that can slash