Downtown is the heart of Blanco.

Downtown is a reflection of how our community sees itself-a critical factor in business retention and recruitment efforts. When industry begins looking at our community as a possible location, they will examine many aspects, including the quality of life.

Included in quality of life is interest in downtown - is it alive and viable, or does it represent local disinterest and failure?

Our downtown represents a significant portion of Blanco’s tax base. If the district declines, property will decrease tax burden on other parts of our community.

Downtown Blanco is the historic core of our community. Many of the buildings are historically significant and help highlight our community’s history.

Downtown represents a vast amount of public and private investment.

Imagine the costs to recreate all the public infrastructure and buildings already existing in our central business district. Think of the waste of past dollars spent if downtown is negelected.

A central business district is often a major tourist draw. When people travel they want to see unique places. There isn’t a downtown like ours in the world!

Downtown is usually a government center. It is where our city hall, the first county courthouse, the post office, and our hometown Blanco National Bank are located. This “one stop” shopping for government services is a notable feature of downtowns across the country.

The most important is that our downtown provides a sense of community and place.

As Carol Lifkind, author of “Main Street: The Face of Urban America said, “...as Main Street, it was uniquely American, a powerful symbol of shared experiences, of common memory, of the challenge, and the struggle of building a civilization. Main Street was always familiar, always recongnizable as the heart and soul of the village, town or city.”

The Downtown Revitalization/Historic Preservation focus for the Visionaries in Preservation is “How do we preserve the very special treasure that we have? In January we would like to hear from you regarding your ideas on how to keep our western heritage and preserve and improve our downtown.”

Please put on your thinking caps, write notes with your ideas and watch for a schedule to meet and share these ideas. It will be in the paper soon.