Downtown Idea Exchange

Each month downtown leaders turn to Downtown Idea Exchange for practical news reports, how-to information, and hundreds of real-world examples of how downtowns are growing and prospering.

 


Downtown Idea Exchange, February 2023

February 1, 2023
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Using incubator spaces to create a pipeline of start-up merchants

January 1, 2023
Kiosks in Santa Cruz, CA (top), and Denver, CO (bottom). Downtowns big and small grapple with the challenge of building a roster of successful merchants. Many have taken a proactive approach by offering pop-up spaces and kiosks for start-ups seeking a place to do business without a prohibitive upfront investment. Executed properly, pop-ups and kiosks…To read more — login/subscribe

 

To clean up public mess, more bathrooms needed downtown

January 1, 2023
It’s no secret that Downtown Pittsburgh has a poop problem. The mayor has publicly lamented the issue, and downtown visitors and workers would be hard-pressed to miss the reality. Pittsburgh’s public defecation and urination have grown so extreme that the Building Owners & Managers Association of Pittsburgh hired a local college, Point Park University, to…To read more — login/subscribe

 

How a downtown director got the city council on board with a repurposed grant program

January 1, 2023
In recent years, Elizabeth Cook noticed that building owners in Charles Town, WV (est. pop. 6,373), stopped applying for the city’s façade improvement grants. The problem? Every building owner who needed a grant had already gotten one. So Cook, downtown coordinator at Charles Town Now, came up with a plan to transition the program to…To read more — login/subscribe