With Guthrie Center continuing to get deeper and deeper into its Main Street Iowa affiliation, the City is about to go through some significant changes in its downtown district.

Facade improvement construction is expected to begin within the next couple of weeks, and Main Street Guthrie Center’s Rusty Pearson feels now is the time for business owners and community leaders to capitalize on the town’s positive momentum.

He says it is his hope that projects like the facade improvement grant lead to a “keeping up with the Joneses” type of approach that is adopted throughout Guthrie Center.

“It’s going to be probably a 3-5 year process to where hopefully we’ll look and see 50-60% of the vacant storefronts become occupied.  That’s probably a reasonable goal, along with seeing more activity.  Activity is critical–foot traffic and people traffic, things like that, will change things.”

Pearson says he also hopes to see one major change in downtown during this initial surge of Main Street Guthrie Center momentum.

“Like say we get the development of a large building or the remodeling of a cornerstone, a 1904/1905 building, that gets completely refurbished… one of those probably will happen in that 3-5 year period.  I think that’s a very realistic goal and a very realistic thing that can happen for our downtown.

To hear our full conversation with Pearson as he talks more about his hopes for Main Street Guthrie Center, tune-in to today’s Let’s Talk Guthrie County on K107 during the 9am, noon and 5pm hours.