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:
- Alamogordo MainStreet – Alamogordo
- Barelas Community Coalition – Albuquerque
- Belen MainStreet Partnership – Belen
- Carlsbad MainStreet- Carlsbad
- Cimarron
- City of Farmington
- Clayton MainStreet – Clayton
- Clovis MainStreet- Clovis
- Corrales MainStreet – Corrales
- Creative Carlsbad- Carlsbad
- Deming MainStreet- Deming
- Downtown Albuquerque Arts & Cultural District – Albuquerque
- Downtown Farmington: a MainStreet Project – Farmington
- Downtown Las Cruces Partnership – Las Cruces
- Economic Development Department – Dept. based in Santa Fe
- Gallup MainStreet Arts & Cultural District – Gallup
- Grants Main Street Project
- Guadalupe Community Development Corporation – Santa Rosa
- Harding County MainStreet – Mosquero, Roy
- Los Alamos MainStreet – Los Alamos
- Lovington MainStreet – Lovington
- MainStreet de Las Vegas- Las Vegas
- MainStreet Roswell – Roswell
- MainStreet Truth or Consequences – T or C
- Mora Arts & Cultural Compound -Mora
- Mountainair
- New Mexico MainStreet – Santa Fe
- New Mexico Resiliency Alliance – Santa Fe
- Nob Hill Main Street – Albuquerque
- Northwest New Mexico Arts Council/City of Farmington- Farmington
- PASEO Project – Taos
- Portales MainStreet Program – Portales
- Raton MainStreet – Raton
- Ruidoso Midtown Association – Ruidoso
- Santa Fe Trail School for the Performing Arts – Raton
- Silver City Arts & Cultural District – Silver City
- Silver City MainStreet – Silver City
- South Valley MainStreet – Bernalillo County
- Strong at Heart – Taos
- Town of Taos – Taos
- Tucumcari MainStreet Corp. – Tucumcari
- 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.