New Mexico Main Street Quarterly Meeting Raton

Brenda Ferry, Executive Director of Raton Main Street assisted in hosting the  New Mexico Main Street’s quarterly meeting this August 7-10. Historic Downtown Raton – The Santa Fe Trail School for Performing Arts, the Shuler Theater and The Stakeout at the Palace hosted more than 80 people at the 3-day conference with representation from 42 of New Mexico’s 106 municipalities. Additional participants attended the awards ceremony on Aug 9. Attendees include MainStreet Organizations, Arts & Cultural Districts, Frontier Community Initiatives and other network members and partners.

Please find a link to our Flickr Album from the conference: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nmmainstreet/albums/72157669944205207

Making Raton one of their favorite 3-day destinations, these New Mexico Municipalities participated:

1. Alamogordo MainStreet – Alamogordo
2. Barelas Community Coalition – Albuquerque
3. Belen MainStreet Partnership – Belen
4. Carlsbad MainStreet- Carlsbad
5. Cimarron
6. City of Farmington
7. Clayton MainStreet – Clayton
8. Clovis MainStreet- Clovis
9. Corrales MainStreet – Corrales
10. Creative Carlsbad- Carlsbad
11. Deming MainStreet- Deming
12. Downtown Albuquerque Arts & Cultural District – Albuquerque
13. Downtown Farmington: a MainStreet Project – Farmington
14. Downtown Las Cruces Partnership – Las Cruces
15. Economic Development Department – Dept. based in Santa Fe
16. Gallup MainStreet Arts & Cultural District – Gallup
17. Grants Main Street Project
18. Guadalupe Community Development Corporation – Santa Rosa
19. Harding County MainStreet – Mosquero, Roy
20. Los Alamos MainStreet – Los Alamos
21. Lovington MainStreet – Lovington
22. MainStreet de Las Vegas- Las Vegas
23. MainStreet Roswell – Roswell
24. MainStreet Truth or Consequences – T or C
25. Mora Arts & Cultural Compound -Mora
26. Mountainair
27. New Mexico MainStreet – Santa Fe
28. New Mexico Resiliency Alliance – Santa Fe
29. Nob Hill Main Street – Albuquerque
30. Northwest New Mexico Arts Council/City of Farmington- Farmington
31. PASEO Project – Taos
32. Portales MainStreet Program – Portales
33. Raton MainStreet – Raton
34. Ruidoso Midtown Association – Ruidoso
35. Santa Fe Trail School for the Performing Arts – Raton
36. Silver City Arts & Cultural District – Silver City
37. Silver City MainStreet – Silver City
38. South Valley MainStreet – Bernalillo County
39. Strong at Heart – Taos
40. Town of Taos – Taos
41. Tucumcari MainStreet Corp. – Tucumcari
42. Zuni Pueblo MainStreet – Zuni Pueblo

“We’re not in Kansas Anymore”

Excerpts from NM Main Street Newsletter

Brenda Ferri, Executive Director of Raton MainStreet is a woman of many talents. Not only was she an integral part of the NMMS awards program, as well as hosting the Summer Leadership Network Meeting, she is a talented actor recently appearing as the witch in the Santa Fe Trail School for the Performing Arts’ production of the Wizard of Oz.

New Mexico Main Street celebrates nearly 35 years of community-based economic development in our state. In the last five years, our MainStreet communities around the state have reported:

• 1,172 Private Building Rehabilitations
• 593 Net New Businesses
• 99 Business Expansions
• 2,714 Net New Jobs
• $124,466,432 Private Reinvestment in Buildings
• 186,070 in volunteer hours.

These figures indicate the kind of performance that is only possible by the contributions of each of our communities.

2018 MainStreet Awards

NMMS recently celebrated organizations and individuals making a difference in our communities. We were fortunate to hold our NMMS 2018 Awards Ceremony at the Historic Shuler Theater in Raton on August 9, where we honored the following organizations and individuals:

• Portales MainStreet
• MainStreet Roswell
• Downtown Farmington: A MainStreet Project
• Mountainair, Frontier Communities Initiative
• Francisco Chavez, Mora Arts & Cultural Compound,
• Harding County MainStreet
• Zuni Pueblo MainStreet
• Businesses: Callahan’s West Brewery, Halona Marketplace, Headquarters, & Lonita’s Café
• Alamogordo MainStreet
• Cindy Collins, MainStreet De Las Vegas
• Christie Ann Harvey, Deming MainStreet
• Diana Sanchez, Raton Board President Raton MainStreet
• Sazi Marri, MainStreet Truth Or Consequences.

The Shuler Theater is an important cultural anchor in downtown Raton having undergone improvements and upgrades in recent years, including new equipment to show first-run movies, and offers impressive cultural programming. NMMS spent our Summer Leadership Network Meeting in Raton exploring creative placemaking and implementing projects in Raton’s MainStreet district.