Toccoa Holds Main Street Awards

An annual event brings out city and community leaders to recognize a year of improvements in downtown Toccoa.

Thursday, the Toccoa Main Street Program hosted its annual Main Street Awards ceremony at the historic Ritz Theatre at the Schaefer Center in downtown Toccoa.

The Main Street program handed out awards to six different individuals, organizations, or businesses.

Toccoa Main Street Events Coordinator Sharon Crosby said the city is pleased to recognize this year’s award winners for their contributions to downtown Toccoa.

“It was a pleasure to be able to honor them and to let them know how much we appreciated their work,” said Crosby.

This year’s award winners include:

• Main Street Newcomer Award – Downtown Scrubs
• Outstanding Community Service – Stephens County Recreation Department
• Best Interior Renovation – [ash-ling] Booksellers
• Best Historic Renovation – Chris Irvin
• Special Recognition – ASI Southeast, Inc.
• Volunteer of the Year – Keith Kozicki

Meanwhile, Crosby said the Main Street Awards also provide the city a chance to thank the volunteers that make all of the events and activities in downtown happen.

“It takes, this past year I think it was, 3,600 hours of volunteer work, so it takes a lot to put our events together and we just want our volunteers to know how much we appreciate their hard work and the time they put into volunteering,” said Crosby.

Overall, Crosby said it was a successful year in downtown Toccoa.

“Main Street is more than promotions,” said Crosby. “It is about design. It is about economic re-structuring. It is about organization and so all of these different things come together to make a successful Main Street program,” said Crosby. “We have had a good year. We have seen growth in all of the different areas and we look forward to a new year with more growth in our downtown.”

For the year 2016, 227 events were held downtown that brought more than 80,000 people into downtown Toccoa.

Also, Main Street Toccoa said there was a net gain of four new businesses in Toccoa’s downtown district in 2016 that resulted in a net gain of 25 new jobs.

Main Street said there was also nearly $1.36 million in public and private investment in downtown Toccoa in 2016.