André Leroux
Massachusetts quietly lost its only statewide program to support downtowns and main streets this summer.
When the Legislature passed its budget and the Gov. Maura Healey signed it, few noticed that funding for the Massachusetts Downtown Initiative (MDI), an already-tiny line-item of $600,000, had disappeared.
What’s more remarkable is that not one business group raised its voice during the budget process or afterwards. The Executive Office of Economic Development itself may even have overlooked the program.
The incident exemplifies the need to revamp the state’s thinking around small business districts, put some ambitious goals on the table, and organize the people who care about these places.
Losing Unique Institutional Knowledge
MDI assists every community in the commonwealth. Whether you had a question about the village of Montague or Boston’s Dorchester Avenue, you always knew you could pick up the phone and call Emmy Hahn, the program’s longtime coordinator. Generous with her time and knowledge, no one has calculated the value of the free advice that she has provided over the years.
When possible, Emmy also convened workshops and trainings that helped build a field of informed and connected downtown practitioners.
On paper, MDI represents a modest grant program, providing 24 communities with $25,000 grants each to undertake activities like branding, parking management or district management.
She also provided us with an award-winning example of what the state might do with a little investment and vision.
Early in the pandemic, Emmy’s office received $10 million to work on downtown rapid recovery plans across the state.
Within eight months, she had assembled an army of issue experts and planners that produced diagnostics and action plans for 124 communities, along with 10 subject matter toolkits, 7 collections of best practices and 25 webinars—all of which are still available to the public on the program’s website.
The rapid recovery plans remain the single best snapshot of our state’s downtowns ever assembled and provided local leaders with a crucial roadmap for investment.
This year, MDI received a record 40 applications for its suddenly unfunded program. To their credit, EOED and MassDevelopment have been working on a temporary solution to ensure that some of these applications go forward.
But amidst the uncertainty, Emmy Hahn accelerated her retirement and will finish her tenure as a state employee this month, leaving an irreplaceable gap in the state’s ability to support downtowns.
Fragmented Programs, Advocates
Of course, the state has other economic development programs, but they tend to address strategic sectors like biotech, climate tech, and housing, or challenges to individual firms around lending or job retention.
The Healey-Driscoll “Team Massachusetts” economic development plan, insightful in many ways, does not address downtowns and main streets at all. The implication is that if we take care of the fundamentals, then downtowns will take care of themselves.
But that is incorrect.
Since downtowns and main streets, as places, help determine the aesthetics, job offerings and amenities of each municipality, not to mention the quality of life experienced by every resident, the lack of bold goals in this area stands out.
Downtown areas only work as collective economic markets, where the overall walkability, density, authenticity, safety and variety can determine everyone’s success.
Although many organizations touch downtowns, no one has emerged with the vision and resources to organize the field.
The result: Massachusetts has no statewide downtown advocacy organization, nor an annual downtown conference.
The Massachusetts Downtown Initiative was a very small spider at the center of a very large web.
A Flag in the Ground
The loss of MDI and its coordinator create the opportunity to reimagine what we truly need in the long term, along with what we can do now.
We need to transform our understanding of central business districts away from the dream of class A office towers towards the diversified, dense and exciting “15-minute” neighborhoods of the future.
We also need a flagship downtown program to support this shift. New York State’s Downtown Revitalization Program allocates $200 million per year to that goal; we should do $50 million.
Finally, we need cabinet-level attention to this issue, and coordination among state agencies that touch downtown policy.
What can be done now?
The Legislature can identify non-revenue reforms making it easier to build dense, mixed-use projects and adopt district management strategies.
The Healey administration could explore a downtown advisory council and encourage agencies to collaborate.
And civil society organizations? We need to show policymakers that many of us do care – enough to show up and speak up.
André Leroux directs the Gateway Cities Innovation Institute at the MassINC Policy Center.
