Jefferson Matters returned from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and brought home the official hardware of winning the Great American Main Street Award and celebrated with a press conference event near the Greene County Courthouse. 

Jefferson Matters Executive Director Matt Wetrich delivered the opening remarks and said Jefferson is one of 52 Main Street Iowa programs and they were the smallest community to be named a semi-finalist for GAMSA. He explained one prominent moment at the awards ceremony was when a five-minute video that highlighted Jefferson on the national stage as Past-President Jamie Daubendiek described as he was also in attendance.

“There’s three winners, so the other two, you know the crowd didn’t say anything. But for our video, when they cut to the drone footage of the rooftop art, there was a collectable gasp by everybody that they were shocked at what they saw. And I don’t know how many thousands of people that were in there did that like that sent chills down my spine, and that was a really cool feeling.”   

Jefferson Mayor Craig Berry explained the background of how the city got its Main Street designation and acknowledged the original members of the group that led the grassroots movement for Jefferson to officially become a Main Street Iowa community in February of 2012, and those individuals included himself, Daubendiek, Kathy Hankel, Reagan Osborne, Nancy Teusch and Chris Henning. 

Jefferson Matters Board President Amy Milligan also made some remarks about building momentum and from having one of the downtown buildings go from an emergency crisis as it was crumbling onto the sidewalk to a complete transformation of the square was simply seeing a dream become a reality. Finally, the Main Street Iowa State Coordinator Carol Lilly wrapped up the event and said that the city underwent 115 buildings restorations from December of 2012 through 2024, and has seen 45 businesses starting or expanding that resulted in 101 new jobs.