“The town has completed its downtown banners,” said Joseph Sloop, director of development and planning for the city of Yadkinville.
Sloop said there was a contest in December 2009 to design a new Yadkinville banner that would be displayed throughout town. A winner was chosen, he said, and the banners ordered.
“We’re waiting for the actual banners to get in. Once they get in and people see them put up, it’s wonderful. We had great participation.
“We had input,” he said. “I think the person who did it did a wonderful job.” They will be installed in the next few weeks.
Sloop made a presentation about the banner project to the Yadkinville Rotary Club Tuesday morning offering an update of on-going projects.
“Currently we are in the process of creating a facade grant. It would allow business owners in the central business district to apply to grants in town if they want to fix their bricks or awnings. They can apply to us. They have to pay up front, and they can get reimbursed up to 50 percent.”
N.C. Step is the program that offers the grants. Boonville and Elkin also participate in the program.
“It’s a great program designed to help small towns, rural towns, get grant money and get free technical assistance in any type of technical design work or planning,” he said. “Those are some great programs the town is looking at trying to get into. We’ve applied for them, and now we’re kind of playing the waiting game.”
While waiting on word as to whether or not the town will be approved for the program, Sloop said he is working on other projects.
“The town is also planning to do some events in the new town park,” said Sloop. “We’re looking at doing some activities at the park, movie night, a good-old fashioned picnic, free and open to the public. We are in the process of planning those and getting it implemented.
“We are also looking at potentially, if everything goes well, we’re going to try and do some other community involvement activities like that. Basically what we’re trying to do is get the community involved. It’s very important that the citizens of a community enjoy being a part of the community with ownership. That’s what we’re trying to do.
“The more people we can bring downtown, the better it is for the downtown business owners. It’s kind of an all-inclusive thing. We’re trying to get people downtown and let people know that some great things are happening here. The Arts Council has a great project going on.”
Sloop talked about growth in Yadkinville.
“I’m excited and waiting on that new Census data to come out. We’ve had some growth. It‘s not been, you know, huge numbers or anything. We’re growing a little bit, and that’s good.”
New businesses are always welcome here, medium to small sized businesses, he said.
“We’ve got the land use plan. We’ve got the downtown master plan. We have an economic strategic plan. We are in the process of adopting the pedestrian master plan and then we‘re working on a comprehensive traffic plan. We’ve got all these plans, and they are complex plans with input from the public.”
Public input is always needed, he said, like where sidewalks should go.
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