Toccoa Main Street Receives Leadership Summit Grant

Main Street Toccoa has received a grant to attend a special leadership summit next month.

The grant was presented to the City in part by the Georgia Council for the Arts, South Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Main Street Executive Director Christian Hamilton said the grant is a scholarship to attend the Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit in Chattanooga next month.

“It’s an exciting opportunity,” Hamilton said. “Creative Placemaking is about developing a sense of place and culture in a specific area. For us, it would be downtown. And we’re hoping to use this conference to develop skills and to find better opportunities to continue to develop downtown Toccoa into a place to be.”

In an effort to develop creative place-making some communities, like the town of Helen in White County, have adopted a theme.

However, Hamilton said Toccoa has no plans like that.

Rather, he says, the goal is to develop a hometown, community feel for visitors and residents alike.

“When people look at a historic downtown they think brick and mortar, they think beautiful buildings and special storefronts; home, in a sense,” he said. “Downtown Toccoa, we believe, embodies that sense of place. So, when we think downtown Toccoa, we want you to think beautiful historic buildings, friends, family, great stores, great restaurants. You can come down here and have a good time. We want this to be the heart of the community. We consider Toccoa to be the heart of Northeast Georgia and we want downtown to be the heart of Toccoa and we’re always working to develop that.”

The Southeastern Conference of Creative Placemaking focuses on building smaller communities in Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.