MEETING MINUTES
Attica Main Street meets the first Thursday of each month
at 10 a.m. in the Council Room at City Hall
FEBRUARY 2, 2023
Present: President Cindy Mason, Vice President Paula Clark, AMS Director Lexxi Haddock, Secretary Emily Harrison, Nate Budreau, Hillary Budreau, Barb Foster, and Wade Harrison
Old business
January Minutes - Paula motioned to approve and Nate seconded all were in favor.
Treasurer Report- Balance $26,580. Cindy will address some year end business.
February 17th- Rushville Main Street Exchange. Lexxi will attend.
Main Street Conference is in Boston for 2023. Lexxi plans to attend and pre register.
Lexxi is looking for a place to host the two part Preservation Webinar for the HRGP program. It is held on Feb. 9th 9-11am and Feb. 17th 9am -2pm.
The city is moving forward with the demolition of its downtown buildings.
Dates/Events
AMS will meet the first Thursday of every month. 10am - City Building.
The work plan and dates have been distributed to the board. They include the following: Dancing in the Streets- July 1st Sprits in the Park- October 7th Scarecrow Contest- second half of October Christmas in Attica- parade will be November 30, 2023 with festivities the following weekend.
Other community dates to note: Badlands Egg Hunt April 15th Garden Tour, Fountain County Landmarks June 17th Attica Alumni reunion- June 10th Held in Ravine Park and Devon Theatre Possible event with Fountain County Landmarks Unseen Downtown Tour- Thursday Sept. 14th Heritage Days September 16th Badlands Concert July 29th The Badlands will host a large concert - Big & Rich featuring Cowboy Troy on July 29th.
Nate mentioned that would be nice to have festivities downtown before the concert. Lexxi will speak with Stephanie about possible ideas.
Duck Race Fundraiser
Lexxi attended the Heritage Days meeting and they were supportive of the Duck Race fundraiser. This was once a fundraiser in Attica and locals remember it. The ducks will be dumped off of Dresser Bridge. Dresser Duck Race was a possible title of the fundraiser. The group started a discussion about possible ideas to build off the duck race leading up to it. A separate committee will meet and develop a plan. There was some excitement of possible ideas.
Community Foundation Creative Places
Lexxi applied for $9,000 from the community foundation. This would allow us to place two sets of poles near and in the heart of downtown to display banners. The banners will create community spirit and share upcoming events. The request also included new brackets and banners for our light poles.
Indiana Landmarks Paul Bruhn Grant
This is a grant program that will be run by Indiana Landmarks. Local businesses are anxiously awaiting to apply for the grant. Tommy Kleckner continues to work on getting the application together. Still no firm dates.
Open Discussion
The Budreaus are interested in working on their parking lot by Pizza King. Our Farmer’s Market is held in the lot. The space has the potential to be designed with placemaking ideas, arts, and parking.
A discussion was held about the city’s grant writer helping downtown building owners with grant applications. The group thought this might be a good idea to bring to city council. Possibly the city could fund a select number of grant requests for downtown building owners each year.
Rod Bannon and Lisa Craft applied for the HRGP. They were not awarded the grant- it is highly sought after all over the state.
Fountain County Landmarks is interested in teaming up with AMS to host a behindthe-scenes tour of downtown- the Unseen City Tour- this would be held the Thursday before Heritage days, September 14th. Planning will need to happen.
Updates
Chip Harrison won the billboard from the Scarecrow Contest. Cindy will put him in the touch with the crew to have it up soon.
Harrison Steel won the snowman contest. Chip gave Emily a list of 10 names that were involved with the winning display. They will have lunch at Pizza King sponsored by AMS. Emily and Chip will coordinate the date.
JANUARY 5, 2023
Present: Mayor Duane Roderick, Clerk/Treasurer Joanne Broadwater, Executive Director Lexxi Haddock, Board President Cindy Mason, Paula Clark, Emily Harrison, Chip Harrison, Nate Budreau
Starting off the year with $32,000 in the bank
Christmas in Attica recap: Thank you to Dolly Poston-Zollars for filming the Light Up Perry Street Parade for those who were unable to attend. The drone footage by Jake’s Aerial Photography was an amazing surprise; the pictures and video were something everyone should seek out. Nate said that this event did exactly what we set out to do because Robie’s was slammed after the parade; it brought business downtown! The reindeer right before the parade at the library was a huge hit and hopefully something that can happen again next time. Harrison’s hot chocolate also went over really well, though Chip said maybe they need to come up with a better system since they were swamped with people. The camper in front of the move theater also went over really well; it was nice to bring another local business to downtown to set up for the day. Helps that it fit with the National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation theme, but maybe we can make it fit again for the next movie. The only negative was that there was a girls basketball game during the parade. Lexxi reached out to Attica’s athletic director to see if maybe sometime in the future games could be avoided being scheduled for that evening, but so far games are scheduled to conflict for at least 2 more years. For the community tree, there was discussion on requesting people use non-breakable ornaments. Nate also said that he wouldn’t mind creating some kind of plywood Christmas display to set up behind the tree to block the wind tunnel effect and maybe limit the amount of ornaments that flew off the tree. Goals for next time: get more sponsors for the parade floats to cover the full cost, get more lights downtown, and get a quote to see about lining the downtown buildings with lights. Emily also said that the open house at Cottrell Village with Indiana Landmarks was a success; well attended and people said they wanted to come back again to see it in the daylight (though the property lit up at night was beautiful). Movie next time at the Devon will be Elf according to Robie, so plan accordingly!
Chip made a motion to nominate Cindy as President and interim Treasurer, Paula as Vice President, and Emily as Secretary for 2023, Cindy seconded, and the motion passed. Lexxi will share that we are looking to fill at least one more board of directors roll who would be willing and able to act as Treasurer.
The proposed workplan and yearly calendar were emailed for review prior to the meeting and discussed. It was decided that Attica Main Street would meet on a monthly basis, instead of bi-monthly, moving forward. Meetings will still be held at 10 a.m. in the City Council Room at Attica City Hall on the first Thursday of each month.
Committees will meet as needed outside of the monthly meeting. Possible sponsors and collaborators were also discussed.
Mayor Roderick invited Lexxi to present the enabling ordinance for the Preservation Commission at the first City Council Meeting coming up on January 9th. Lexxi said she would get ahold of Tommy Kleckner to make sure she had the correct example ordinance, and would forward to the Mayor and city attorney for review prior to the meeting.
Meeting adjourned at 11:15 a.m. Next meeting will be February 2nd at 10 a.m. AKA Groundhog Day!