The “Downtown Roadmap” sessions held in June at the Sumrall Community Center proved to be fruitful for town officials, who were able to take the ideas and suggestions of residents at those events to develop a strategic plan for downtown revitalization over the next three to five years.
As part of that process, members from the Sumrall Main Street Association, the Mississippi Main Street Association and several other organizations toured the town for three days to gather possibilities for downtown.
“At the end of that three days, they took all of the research and data from the tours that we did, and we did a lot of one-on-one sessions with people in town,” said Sabreya DeLancey, executive director of the Sumrall Main Street Association. “We did some focus groups and one big community presentation on the first night where residents could bring us all their ideas, and we did some polls that night.
“We took all of that and kind of put it into one final presentation that they did for us, and that’s what we’re building our strategic plan for Sumrall on.”
One of the top ideas from that is the creation of a community space, or green space, for Sumrall residents. That would give officials a new space to host town events such as festivals and other experiences.
“We don’t really have that now,” DeLancey said. “We don’t have a town square, so we’re going to make it a town green space.
“There’s a lot of different plans that were brought together for that one, which everybody seemed to love.”
Another concept is taking some downtown buildings with large square footage and splitting those into smaller footage in the front and larger footage in the back. That would provide for office space in the back and a small retail space in the front.
“We want to utilize that space better for our downtown and get more businesses in without a big cost up front for them,” DeLancey said. “I think that’s going to work really well for Sumrall.”
DeLancey said many people think of Sumrall as a “discount town” because of its small size and rural nature, but quite the opposite is true.
“W actually have one of the highest incomes per capita in the state,” she said. “Our average household income is about $65,000, and that’s really high compared to the rest of our state.
“I think with that, it tell us the types of businesses that we can bring in are a lot different than what the city has looked at previous to this plan.”
Because of its work during the Downtown Roadmap sessions, the Mississippi Main Street Association recently was honored with the Best Small Area Project Award by the Mississippi Chapter of the American Planning Association. The award was presented during a conference in Biloxi to Thomas Gregory, who serves as MMSA state coordinator.
APA Mississippi’s Chapter Awards recognize the best in planning in Mississippi. The Best Small Area Project award recognizes an outstanding small area plan that advances the art and science of planning for a community, county, or region.
The award is given for an area that is smaller than an entire jurisdiction, without regard to population size.
“The Mississippi Main Street Association is honored to receive this award because it recognizes the important role that strategic planning plays in the success of our downtowns,” Gregory said. “The Sumrall Downtown Roadmap provides a strong vision for Sumrall’s historic downtown district and follows the principles of the Main Street Approach.”
The Sumrall Roadmap planning team included Randy Wilson of Community Design Solutions, Chance McDavid of the Mississippi Development Authority, Bethany Byrd of Own Your Hill, Rachael Carter of Mississippi State University Extension, Andy Kalback of Kalback Design Studio, and Thomas Gregory and Jennifer Lay of the Mississippi Main Street Association.
