LAMAR—When Lamar City Councilwoman Beverly Haggard thinks about the future of downtown Lamar she gets fired up over the possibilities.
Haggard was a vocal proponent at Monday evening’s council meeting of the city joining the Colorado Main Street Program. The program is intended to help beleaguered downtown districts regain vitality through re-investment, re-development, and re-purposing of its assets.
Haggard was adamant that the city needs to take a proactive step in bettering itself and its future. “If we want to sit here and die, we’re going to sit here and die. We’ve sat here and died for 40 years, let’s do something different. Even if it’s wrong, it’s something different people. If we stay on the same road, we’re going to look like a ghost town in five years. If we don’t do something now, it’s not going to improve.”
City Administrator Ron Stock said the program has been in existence since 1982 nationwide, covering more than 40 states and encompassing 2,800 communities. On the council’s agenda Monday was a contract to become a candidate city in the program. Stock said two other cities had been offered the same opportunity.
A candidate city in the program has access to many of the training and planning services the program offers at half the of $3,000 annually for full membership. The program is supported through state funds including revenue from the department of local affairs.  Candidate cities are afforded three years to complete the process to become full members in the program. There are currently eight communities in Colorado listed as members in the program including Arvada and Walsenburg.
Stock said he didn’t see any truly negative aspects of joining the program, and added that the Main Street Program should be the focal point of the city’s re-vitalization efforts of the downtown commercial zone. The administrator told the council he felt the Main Street Program should easily trump the urban renewal program because the urban renewal program is only a financing mechanism to be used in the re-vitalization effort.
The administrator informed the council that for the program to be successful, it would need to develop broad-based community buy-in. “We can’t have something top down telling people what to do,” said Stock. He emphasized the need to have individuals throughout community as members of the committees that form the Main Street program.
The council approved the contract to become a candidate city in the Colorado Main Street Program.