The Crossville-Cumberland County Chamber of Commerce has launched a community survey to receive public feedback to help establish priorities for the city’s new Main Street Program.
Crossville Main Street Program Executive Director PJ Barnes said Crossville was recognized as an accredited Main Street Program a few months ago. Barnes said the main purpose of the survey is to see how the new program can improve Downtown Crossville.
“You know we want to get input from the people that are in downtown on a daily, weekly, monthly basis and what those people want to see,” Barnes said. “Because of course, I have my ideas for what I would love, you know, downtown to be, but what really matters is the community and what they want downtown to be.”
Barnes said the survey is available on Downtown Crossville’s Facebook page and through QR codes posted inside many downtown businesses. The deadline for the survey is this Friday.
Barnes said the survey asks questions like what people like and dislike about the downtown area. Barnes said public feedback is crucial when it comes to establishing a plan to better the downtown area.
“At the end of the day, the community they are the ones who support our downtown and our downtown businesses,” Barnes said. “You know we have to make sure the community is happy and that they have a good relationship with our downtown, with our business owners in downtown cause without the community, we would not be in the position that we are in today with everything that we have going on.”
Barnes said the goal is to form a plan to target grant funding to make improvements. Barnes said it is important that Crossville maintains a successful downtown area.
“More and more people are looking to come into downtown and shop at these mom and pop, locally owned stores rather than going to big box stores,” Barnes said. “And we want to make sure that we give our business owners downtown the people to support them, so that way we can sustain that growth because you know, like I said, we believe downtown is kind of the heartbeat of Crossville and Cumberland County, and anything we can do to support downtown, we are gonna do our best.”
Barnes said after reviewing surveys, the program will have a meeting with the state at the Chamber of Commerce on February 2 from 4pm-6pm. Barnes said the first hour of the meeting is a closed meeting, but encourages everyone to attend the second hour of the meeting, as it is open to the public.