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Holly Harmon and Terry Cosgrove
The Art of Coffee owners Holly Harmon and Terry Cosgrove in Montross have been active in revitalization efforts since 2005.
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The town of Montross is enjoying a rural renaissance as an up-and-coming arts and business district.
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Village shops and eateries stay open late on 1st Fridays. Residents and visitors can walk leisurely through the village and enjoy the festivities. Children are welcome.
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The transformation of Montross is an incentive for new businesses to climb aboard for what looks like a promising future.
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Mural by renowned international 3D street painter and fine artist Melanie Stimmel.
It was the fall of 2005 when the townspeople of Montross were gathered at a public hearing for a very serious conversation. Over the past century the once-bustling business hub had undergone a profound economic decline, as has happened to thousands of small towns in rural America. With job growth stagnant and the population in decline, the town was at a tipping point, said Terry Cosgrove, Montross’s vice mayor and owner/operator—along with his wife, Holly Harmon—of the Art of Coffee. “It could either dry up and watch the traffic flow by, or we could stop the decay.”
It wasn’t always that way, said Brenda Reamy, Montross’s town manager. “I grew up about ten miles outside of town and our family came to Montross to do our business. People referred to the area as The Village then, and it was a lot busier! People didn’t go to Fredericksburg or Richmond to do their business. That was a big deal. There had to be a real reason to do that. Everyone came here to do their business. There was a movie theater, a bowling alley, a coffee house for teenagers, five gas stations down Main Street, at least three new car dealerships, and mom had four grocery stores to choose from!”
By the time the town hall meeting ended, late that night, a decision had been made. Montross would need to find a way to eliminate blight, encourage revitalization—both aesthetic and economic—and increase employment opportunities. It was time to “return to the village,” and join what has become a “rural renaissance” as small towns across America reinvent themselves by embracing their arts and culture. Some seven years into its revitalization, the classic Old South town is not only refurbished from foundation to façade but also showing visible signs of becoming the collective vision of Montross business owners and residents: an up-and-coming arts and business district.
Park benches and shiny new street lights with state-of-the-art cross walks line the newly-paved Route 3 that snakes through the town. Four large-scale murals are reminders of Montross’s “back in the day,” what the old-timers called “the village,” a seed packet advertisement from the 1900s on Bridget’s Bouquets, the old Nomini Ferry tomato cannery label on the Westmoreland County Museum, a scene of the old village on Carrot Cottage, and a newly refurbished mural on the old Northern Neck Coca-Cola plant. Wayfaring signage announces that historic Montross lies ahead.
Nine new businesses have sprouted up in the downtown area, including Studio Montross, a yoga/pilates studio; Montross Vintage, an antiques, midcentury-modern, collectibles, and gift shop; and the Diane Jackson Art Studio, creating new jobs. In the east and west ends (outside the project area), twenty new businesses have opened, among them Little Eagles Child Development Center, Montross Food Mart, and King George Welding, creating twenty-nine new jobs.
The turning point was back in 2007 when the town of Montross unveiled its Comprehensive Plan focusing on three areas for revitalization: the downtown (between the post office and the laundromat), and the east and west ends. When they presented the plan to Jerry Davis, executive director of the Northern Neck Planning District, and his staff, “they pushed us to not let this sit on the shelf,” said Reamy. “Over and over again, you see where locales develop a plan, go through the process, then it goes on a shelf. No one does anything.” said Davis. Not this village.
In 2008 they received two small grants to get the project started and then $25,000 to develop a master plan. The next level of grants got them a Downtown Revitalization Plan (2010) with goals and costs to accomplish those goals. One year later, the town applied to the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development for a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). It was declined. Undeterred and with a few tweaks—mostly cost reductions—they applied again. The rest is history.
In 2013 a $530,000 grant was awarded to help with facade improvements, designs, pedestrian signs, and lighting in the downtown business district because it had the most vacancies—55 percent in commercial property alone. Design plans were drawn up for ten buildings that needed to be refurbished, all complete except for two buildings still underway: Bridget’s Bouquets and the construction of a new commercial building that will be a replica of the old NAPA store.
Holly Harmon, one of the hardworking volunteers, sent out bid requests for muralists and serendipitously came across information on Melanie Stimmell. A renowned international 3D street painter and fine artist, awarded the title of Maestra Madonnara (Master Street Painter) in both Italy and Germany, Stimmell has quite an impressive resume, including a stint as lead technical director for the South Park TV series. “I didn’t think we would get her in my wildest dreams, but I figured well, what the heck. I was shocked when she bid under the amount we wanted to spend.” In September Stimmell will complete two more gateway murals in the east and west ends of town, and four private businesses will purchase their own murals.
Along the way, business owners and residents invested their own money in the vision. “There’s an assumption that grant money came in here and everyone got free everything. The grant was significant but just a motivator,” explained Cosgrove. “More than 613K was invested by private owners and businesses. For example, in the “Façade Improvement” program, they took a look at the buildings and assigned a dollar value for the grant money needed. But owners had to match that amount with funds of their own. “In fact, adds Davis, “Out of eleven property owners who received grants, everyone overmatched their grants, sometimes three times over.”
The grant included a $140,000 revolving loan account, loaned out with interest to assist the businesses that made private investments to complement funding for façade improvement from the grant. “It has been paid back with interest and we’ve lent it out again,” explained Reamy. The money remains in the town’s coffers and continues to be an incentive as new businesses climb aboard what looks to be a promising future for the town.
The fact that a town with a population of about 350, covering a grand total of three square miles, received the generous grant was a godsend. But without the townspeople’s sweat equity, the opportunity would never have become a reality.
“The grant requires you to have stakeholders to volunteer. We had thirty-five people ask to be part of the management team; we were supposed to have fifteen,” said Reamy. “When we called the Department of Housing and Community Development for advice, they said, ‘Don’t worry. By the time you get to the project, you’ll only have eight or ten.’ Well, we still have twenty-five of the original members.”
“If you consider these members are still with us and that we’ve been at this for about eight years with monthly meeting and work sessions, surveys, going door to door, working with subcommittees and contractors, we must have amassed several years of volunteer hours,” said Cosgrove.
It was the people of Montross doing it, and it brought the town together. “Everyone takes pride in it because they were part of it,” said Reamy. “When they were putting in the street lights, people sat on the benches and they let me know if it wasn’t going right! They’d call and say, ‘you know that light is a little crooked.’“
“We’ve said over and over again that the way the town has gone through this process, that’s the way it is supposed to happen,” adds Davis. “In fact, the state of Virginia wanted to showcase two of their projects at their grant training workshop that met in August last year. Montross was one that was chosen because the town did it the way it should have been done.”
As to the future, “All grant projects must be finished,” said Reamy, “and all paperwork signed and completed by the end of October. Once we finish, we will do another comprehensive plan in 2016 to figure out where we go from here. We are seeing growth in both the east and west ends of town because of the changes we’ve made downtown. So our original plan doesn’t fit with what is needed now.”
Carol Chandler, owner of Carrot Cottage on Courthouse Square, said, “There’s a whole lot of interest among fellow business people in nearby towns about how we did this. And it’s contagious. Just the other day I had a business person from a neighboring town say, ‘It looks so good. How did this happen?’”
It took a village.
For more information on Montross and the Greater Montross Partnership for Revitalization, a Virginia Main Street Affiliate, see visitmontross.com or find them on Facebook.
This article appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of The Local Scoop Magazine, pg. 29-35.