Downtown Plant City needs its own Lorenzo the Magnificent. Or a few of them.
The storied ruler of the Medici clan supported innovation and arts during the height of the Italian Renaissance in Florence, providing patronage to artists like Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. His community investment bolstered one of the most prolifically forward-thinking eras in the history of the world. And, if Plant City’s Historic Downtown is to thrive, Jane Waters, executive director of Historic Plant City Main Street, said, that’s the kind of community investment it needs.
“That is absolutely the key to everything,” Waters said. “Those that have, if they can share, whether it’s their time, their wisdom or their wealth, those are the things that we need, specifically from the Main Street end of the world.”
Waters became the interim leader of Plant City’s renewed Main Street charter in late 2017, following the departure of Karen Thompson, and was recently voted in as the organization’s permanent director. Now with a few months of work under her belt, Waters has conceptualized a few strategies for the success of downtown’s revitalization, including a few business types to bring to the burgeoning area and how to find success for creators and entrepreneurs looking to make Plant City home.
“When you marry wellness technology and the arts in a downtown district along with services and restaurants, it starts hopping very quickly,” Waters said.
Mara Latorre, a Plant City planner and the city’s liaison to Main Street, recently came up with a wish list of business types to come to Plant City that Waters says fall perfectly in line with what the city needs to become its own vibrant, self serving community. Latorre said downtown needs a pizzeria, a bicycle shop, a music venue and art space, taqueria highlighting the areas vibrant Mexican community, a brewery and a dedicated grocery market, among others.
“Those types of businesses are what can help make downtown a more walkable area and come alive,” Latorre said.
Latorre and Waters said Plant City already has some great and unique businesses, like the Corner Store, which have shown the potential to bring even more vibrance and innovation downtown.
Getting those businesses here might take some creative strategies. The city has a number of programs like the facade improvement and code correction grant, interior buildout grant and business development programs that can help a young entrepreneur establish a brick and mortar presence. Latorre said the city’s planning department is more than willing to help with any prospective business with zoning or land use questions, eventually directing them to other city organizations that can help ease the burden of opening a new business. On the Main Street side, Waters said she plans to hold workshops that could also help direct prospective business owners to the proper channels, including grant applications.
Getting to the point of opening that brick and mortar location, however, can require a little more generosity. Enter the patrons of downtown. Waters said the best way to kickstart more entrepreneurship downtown would be through the patronage of current business and property owners. With a number of vacant storefronts and available space downtown, Waters said donated space could serve as an incubator for the creators of Plant City to collaborate and serve as pop-up shops for new businesses that might not be ready for a permanent location or able to afford one. Waters’ own Winter Haven gallery started as a donated space, which was essential in allowing it to grow and thrive, she said.
“It’s a community effort,” she said. “Without that, it will not work. The government and nonprofits cannot do it without community.”
The strategy, she said, is one that has worked for a number of other Main Street organizations and can lead to harmony between existing businesses and those that will bring Plant City into the future.
From food innovators to artists and engineers, the desire to create and bring new business that can make Historic Downtown a self-sufficient community is here, Latorre and Waters said, the future entrepreneurs just need the chance to make it all happen. In 2018, making it happen is what Waters plans to do.