Colorado’s Main Street Experience

Client: Colorado State Historic Preservation Office

Site: Statewide

In 1977, the National Trust for Historic Preservation began a program entitled the “Main Street Experience”, the goal of which was to encourage economic revitalization within the context of historic preservation in the downtown districts of small cities and towns. Due to the success of this program, it was expanded to include six additional states, one of which was Colorado. The Collaborative was selected to provide evaluations of “Main Street Experiences” in the communities of Delta, Durango, Grand Junction, Manitou Springs, and Sterling, Colorado. Each being quite different communities, their approaches to revitalization varied substantially, and no attempt was made to determine the overall success or failure of their programs. Instead, the effectiveness of development strategies, organizations, and the problems they encountered were analyzed and evaluated by the Collaborative, for their usefulness to other Colorado communities.