Dan Hoffman: 0:10

Hello and welcome to the Rouse Review. I'm your city manager Dan Hoffman and with me is the PIO, Sarah Fry.

Sarah Frey: 0:16

Hi everybody.

Dan Hoffman: 0:17

Uh, we are, we're almost out of

Sarah Frey: 0:21

summer? Oh, I hope so. I don't want to, I don't want to tease it. Knock on some wood.

Dan Hoffman: 0:25

But I can tell you last week's weather was pretty bad. Uh, and I hope everyone's out there enjoying the walking mall. And speaking of the walking mall, we will be, uh, a little bit later in the show. We're going to be talking to Brady Clovin, executive director of Winchester Main Street, and Jenny McDonald, uh, with our economic development authority. We're going to be talking mainly about, uh, the downtown walking mall, uh, and what that new organization is going to be doing for the city. Uh, tomorrow night at council. We have, uh, I never like to say it's a light agenda, but we don't have many items on the agenda. Who knows how long the meeting will go. Uh, encourage everybody if you want to. We are back in City Hall.

Sarah Frey: 1:06

Yes, we are. The

Dan Hoffman: 1:07

elevator is fixed. Hallelujah. I can tell you, I was a little worried that we were just going to have like a, I was going to have to get up to the fourth floor, like via bucket or something. I will tell

Sarah Frey: 1:16

you my cardio has increased so much in the last like three months. Oh

Dan Hoffman: 1:20

my goodness. God. I, I, I clear what this. Two, three months has shown me is that I need to go back to the gym. Anyway, closed

Sarah Frey: 1:28

my rings every day.

Dan Hoffman: 1:29

There you go. I have, I have gotten all my steps in up and down these stairs. Uh, so, but what that means for the, for y'all out in, uh, Winchester is that, uh, we are having all our meetings back at city hall again. So if it's a committee meeting, a full council meeting, like tomorrow night, uh, we are back in city hall, uh, on the agenda. We are, you know, we've got a, Board of Architectural Review, uh, public hearing, uh, there's an executive session about the hiring process for the city attorney. If you're curious, it's still, we're still in the process. Uh, so, um, more, more on that in the coming months. Uh, and with that, there's really no other major items on the agenda tomorrow night. So show up at city hall, say hi, Make use of public comment if you like, uh, and, you know, say hello. Uh, we've got a bunch of other stuff coming up though. Now that summer, even though summer might, summer might be winding down, kids are back in school, um, don't forget to be very cautious around school zones guys.

Sarah Frey: 2:32

And school buses.

Dan Hoffman: 2:33

And school buses, um. There's still a lot of stuff coming up. We're going to talk about a little bit of it later, but for now, Sarah, let's talk about what's coming up.

Sarah Frey: 2:43

All right. Well, as we come out of summer, it just ramps up. So get ready. September, October, they're going to be crazy. So. Just the first half of September, just be aware Labor Day, Labor Day is this weekend.

Dan Hoffman: 2:54

Almost there.

Sarah Frey: 2:55

The end of summer, school's back, it's wild. But most importantly for all of our city residents, that means your trash pickup will probably be off schedule. So if you get your trash picked up on Mondays, it's going to be picked up on Wednesdays and that means there will not be any yard waste picked up on Wednesday. So

Dan Hoffman: 3:12

just be aware. And one other quick thing folks, uh, we, you know, we adjust sometimes the The time at which we need your cans to be out because in the heat of summer We don't want to have our employees, you know, getting having heatstroke at 2 3 in the afternoon on the back of a trash truck, so We do shift the hours a little bit earlier during the summer. We appreciate everyone's attention Accommodation of that, so just make sure you get that can out the night before, you know, I believe we readjust the times a little bit in the fall when things cool off, but we appreciate everybody's cooperation with that because it does, um, it does really help our our folks in solid waste.

Sarah Frey: 3:57

Next up, um, National Avenue is going to be under construction starting the Tuesday after Labor Day. It's going to take a while.

Dan Hoffman: 4:06

Yup.

Sarah Frey: 4:07

But, it's going to help us replace water mains. Gas. And utility stuff. The gas company's in there doing stuff right now. We're trying

Dan Hoffman: 4:16

to do it all at the same time, folks, so that we only have to, you know, close it down and tear it up once.

Sarah Frey: 4:21

And then we'll be able to repave it, fix any sidewalks, make everything beautiful. It's gonna make everything more reliable for our north end. It's ultimately a great thing, but unfortunately, it's gonna be closed to everybody except local traffic from September until around the new year.

Dan Hoffman: 4:36

Yeah, so let's talk about Look at alternative routes. We'll also have our alternative routes marked

Sarah Frey: 4:42

Yep, we're gonna be sending people down Woodstock Lane

Dan Hoffman: 4:44

If you're if you are upset by this do not take it out on the crews that are working there They have nothing to do with this and this is a necessary infrastructure replacement. So We take care of our city. We're an old city third oldest water in the country so a lot of Sometimes it's just repairing what's broken. Sometimes it's preventative maintenance, but we keep our stuff in good working order and this is necessary. So we definitely empathize with the kind of inconvenience for four months, but you know, that's part of living in the community. Sometimes we're going to have to fix things.

Sarah Frey: 5:21

And wouldn't you rather just have consistent, reliable water all the time? If you want

Dan Hoffman: 5:27

that, that's, um, That's what we got to do. So yeah, keep an eye out for that. Pay attention to closure signs. Please, uh, follow any rerouting directions and, uh, hang in there. Hang in there.

Sarah Frey: 5:40

Well, I'll get through it together. All right. Next up, if you want credits for your stormwater bill, if you love our neighborhood parks,

Dan Hoffman: 5:48

then

Sarah Frey: 5:49

you should join us Thursday, September 5th at Douglas Park for a pickup party starting at 5 30. This is the first pickup party we will have had in a very long time that is not connected to a neighborhood night.

Dan Hoffman: 5:59

So

Sarah Frey: 6:00

come out, join us, get your credits, check out Douglas Park. If you haven't been there in a while, it is beautiful. It's

Dan Hoffman: 6:06

nice. We've put a ton of money into Douglas Park, getting the field reconditioned and usable. I think we put some new lights, a bathroom out there. I believe

Sarah Frey: 6:15

the playground is beautiful. Go

Dan Hoffman: 6:17

check it out. We've, we've invested a lot in this park, uh, in a very important neighborhood in the city. So, uh, go check it out.

Sarah Frey: 6:25

And then. Last but certainly not least. Please save the date for Saturday, September 21st at the North End Citizens Association, where we're going to be having a police open house at the WPS Admin Building, which conveniently enough is at the Douglas School right next to Douglas Park. So you can hear from command staff at the police department, ask questions, get to know some of the teams engaging with our community and just keeping it a safe, wonderful place to live.

Dan Hoffman: 6:51

Yeah.

Sarah Frey: 6:52

That's what I've got coming up.

Dan Hoffman: 6:54

Awesome. Well, we're going to take a quick Pause here. We are going to bring in Brady Clovin and Jenny McDonald stick around All right, welcome first time to the show Brady Clovin. I want to make sure i'm pronouncing that properly. I've been saying cloven.

Brady Cloven: 7:13

Yeah, that's exactly how you say it. Oh Gotcha.

Dan Hoffman: 7:17

All right. Well, that is easy. It's not, oh, it's Cluveen or something. I don't see any accents here. So Brady Cloven. And then this one, uh, which is, there's no guesswork in Jenny McDonald, uh, and how to pronounce that name. Uh, Jenny, we know because she works over at the EDA, the Economic Development Authority. Uh, Brady, you probably do not know, uh, because he is the brand new executive director of Winchester Main Street. Welcome Brady. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. Uh, so We're here today obviously to introduce, uh, Introduce to both of you since you're both new to the podcast Uh, but we want to talk a little bit about what winchester main street is Uh how it came into existence get into, you know, what is it? What is it going to be doing? So, uh, first off Let's why don't you guys both introduce yourselves?

Jenny McDonald: 8:07

Hi, i'm jenny mcdonald. I am with the city of winchester eda You

Brady Cloven: 8:12

And I'm Brady Clovin, and I'm the Executive Director for Winchester Main Street. Awesome. Jenny, how long have you been with us?

Jenny McDonald: 8:19

I have been with the city since July of 2022.

Dan Hoffman: 8:22

Gotcha. And Brady, you moved here months ago.

Brady Cloven: 8:26

Yeah, I moved back down to Virginia in February and then took this job in mid June. So still pretty new. I'm from Virginia, but new to newer to Winchester. Yeah. So what were you

Dan Hoffman: 8:36

doing

Brady Cloven: 8:36

before this? Uh, before this, I was up in Massachusetts and I worked for a nonprofit that helped, um, veterans and their families who were experiencing homelessness. Uh, they had a state funded internship program that we started from scratch and then ran that helped, uh, people coming out of recovery who wanted to go into the recovery field, uh, line up with an internship job opportunities. So my job was to create a curriculum, um, Recruit and then go around the state to talk to the different, uh, higher education institutes, job workforce boards, um, and local governments to make sure that we had a nice pipeline that didn't, uh, let people fall through the cracks. And before that I was with the Boston chamber of commerce, um, doing some government affairs stuff with a small business, economic development, working at a seaport a lot. So yeah, some fun stuff. That's very cool.

Dan Hoffman: 9:23

Sounds like a topic for an entire other podcast. That is, that is very interesting. So, uh, and Jenny, you're over at the Economic Development Authority. Um, you know, I'm not going to get into the minutia of, um, government structure. I know this person's the fiduciary for that, that entity or whatnot, but Winchester Main Street is an independent nonprofit. Uh, and EDA is a, You know, people might call it a quasi government. It's independent of the city, uh, but, you know, we, there, it is our economic development arm, uh, so tell me about the relationship a little bit between, uh, how Main Street and EDA work together, either one of you guys.

Brady Cloven: 10:05

Yeah, I can take that. Um, excuse me. So, you know, the EDA has been extremely supportive with transitioning us to our own entities. So for some backstory, like you were saying, Dan, the EDA was administering. Um, our version of Main Street before we split into our own non profit. So now that we have formed, the EDA is doing pretty much everything they can to help us. So they're, um, helping us identify grants. They're giving us office space in their building so that we can work out of it, introducing us to the community. Um, so the government is very, or not the government. Let's do that again. Um, the relationship is very supportive, um, and collaborative, uh, because we're all working towards the same things. It's just now with our role, the EDA can go back to their much wider, um, role of responsibilities, and then we as Winchester Main Street can just focus on Old Town. Um, so it is really just a, a helping each other relationship and, and making sure nobody again falls through the cracks and that everybody's taken care of.

Dan Hoffman: 11:06

So, what is, Main Street now has been in existence, I mean, not counting, like, oh, we filed the paperwork to become an organization, but it really came into existence, into existence with your hiring, which was just about two months ago, you're on your second month. So obviously we, we don't expect, you know, the, uh, Dramatic changes on the walking mall in two months, but tell us what you, what you're working on. Cause I know there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes now to lay a strong foundation. Tell me what you guys are working on.

Brady Cloven: 11:36

Yeah, we've got a couple of really exciting things going on. Um, before that there's the less exciting things like the admin that you have to really set up. So getting the website, the branding logo, but this past week we actually had a firm come in destination by design and they're helping us with a logo, a brand. Um, you know, Trying to really make sure that the communication around it is a were a new thing that has been here. But now we have, um, much wider, um, Um, wider range, I guess you could say, like, there's more that we can do now in this version of Winchester Rain Street, um, because we're not run by the government. And as you know, you know, the government is held up by, there might be a bureaucratic process. There's, you know, you, you can't be eligible for as many grants, fundraisers, so on and so forth, but we can. Um, so we're working It's a lot harder

Dan Hoffman: 12:23

for us to raise, we, we can't just take donations. We, we Right. We collect taxes. We don't take

Brady Cloven: 12:29

donations. Right. Right. Right. So we're working on that. But we also have a master planning project that is getting underway also with destination by design We had a great community meeting last week where about 25 to 30 community members came out and talked about what they want to see and You know, i'm sure jenny can talk about it more if she wants to but the the eda is working on These neighborhood design districts. That's not what we do We want to help however, we can But that is a city thing, um, EDA thing. Uh, so we are taking a plan that's really going to focus on Old Town specifically. And it's going to focus on two things, the local business ecosystem. So what's here now, what we want to see come to Winchester as a business in the next 20, 30 years. Uh, and then we're also going to focus on urban design, public spaces, and public art. So talking to the businesses and the merchants about, Hey, uh, what do you want to see, Downtown, you know, we have a splash pad on the south end, but somebody brought up the point like we don't really have anything on the north end like that, that's bringing families up there. So really just trying to take in a community driven approach to say, what do you want to see included in the next 20 years? We can then take that plan, go to the EDA and say, Hey, while you're doing these NDDs, maybe keep this in mind. Like this is, we, we've done the work for you.

Dan Hoffman: 13:41

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, another thing people love about the walking mall and all the events, uh, tell us how those will work in the future.

Brady Cloven: 13:50

I can let Jenny talk about this one. Jenny's been running the events, um, pretty much single handedly, uh, for the past year, so I'll, I'll swing that over to her.

Jenny McDonald: 13:58

Well, thank you, Brady. I, um, we've been working very closely with the, uh, with the Main Street folks to sort of transition the events to them. Um, Brady has been at all of the events since he started. We've been doing First Fridays. He was at Rockin Independence Eve. And so we've really just been working with them to try and, um, you know, show them the ropes and how everything works and, you know, all the ins and outs. Because, you know, there are a lot of aspects to it. An event that in a lot of moving parts, so it's just, you know, getting them familiar with all of those things so that we can eventually and those will be the city events in Old Town, things like Celtic Fest, First Fridays, Chocolate Escape, Kids Fest, you know, there's those standing events that. Um, you know, that, that people see on the calendar every year. Um, so those will eventually transition to the Main Street non profit.

Dan Hoffman: 14:53

Awesome. So if somebody wants to get, uh, get involved with Main Street, how do they do that?

Brady Cloven: 14:58

Yeah, right now we have monthly community meetings. Um, they're being held at BrewWorks. They're, uh, the third Friday of every month at 9 a. m. So the next one's going to be September 20th, and we're going to focus on a Q3 round table, just kind of take some time to reflect on what we've been doing since we started, um, what we're going to do the rest of the year, um, get people involved. And then on November 15th, we'll also have a events master planning meeting. So this kind of goes into what Jenny was saying, where we're going to try to get a schedule of events going. Or at least drafted for the next year. So everybody is on the same page with that. Another great way to get involved is, you know, the main street program we have here, um, which I can hint at is not going to be called Winchester main street, uh, in a few months. Um, so we're gonna have a nice, exciting new name, new logo. Um, but you know, we, I'd like to say that we. Came here that I, I came down from Boston and I had this giant plan of how we could, you know, help Main Street, but it's already an established program. Um, you know, we are part of a large system across the Commonwealth called Virginia Main Street program. And then on top of that is the, the parent company, the Main Street America. Um, so there's already an established, uh, program that is helping main streets across the country. Um, and the commonwealth has done a really great job with this too. So with that comes four pillars, um, that kind of guide all of our work. So there's a design pillar, which when you think of public art projects, the master planning project falls under that. Um, when you're getting into the fun urban planning stuff, like alleyway activation streetscape like that would all go under a design committee. is going to be more about promoting the. Image of downtown so that's really gonna be social media. That's gonna be the website And then organization is the fun stuff that nobody wants to do like fundraising budget prep that usually falls to me. That's final I'll take that one for everybody and then economic vitality which really works with the business merchants downtown to figure out You know if there's Some sort of program that we could bring here, um, that's going to help them, or maybe it's working hand in hand with the promotions committee that will also take over events, um, to figure out, you know, what's what's going to work best for the businesses downtown while we're doing events. So keeping them in mind and all 4 of those pillars have their own committees on our board. Um, so if you want to volunteer, uh, that is also another way to get involved. Um, just reach out to me. Um, yeah. My email is pretty long right now. Can I say it on here? Sure, um, you're probably not going to get it but it's it's main and then st win dot b cloven at gmail. com

Dan Hoffman: 17:31

Yeah, we'll give you Yeah, it's very long. We'll give you a new one soon. Um, uh, so. When's the website? I know the website's in process, or is that up now?

Brady Cloven: 17:37

Uh, the website is in process, uh, so we've sent out RFPs for that, and that should be up and running, uh, in October to go hand in hand with our new logo and name. Okay. Yeah. Awesome. So it's all coming along. And one of the other

Dan Hoffman: 17:48

things that's coming up on the horizon is Fiddles and Fifths, which back for its third year.

Jenny McDonald: 17:53

Yes

Dan Hoffman: 17:54

third year. Yes, it's back

Jenny McDonald: 17:56

for its third year

Dan Hoffman: 17:57

some changes. Uh To the event this year some tweaks different spot on the walking mall jenny

Jenny McDonald: 18:04

Yes So pretty much the entire event is going to be contained to the area on the walking mall and sort of adjacent areas The taylor pavilion the the feltner lot across from el centro if people are familiar with that. Um, we're going to have um, a beer garden featuring our awesome local breweries and cideries on the old courthouse lawn. Um, but pretty much the entire event is going to take place on on the walking mall. We've partnered with, um, the bright box and the monuments to have some bands in those venues. And we'll also have a band, um, a stage on Boscowan Street. by Broken Window. Um, where we'll have three bands there throughout the day. So, we're going to have a distillery area in the Taylor Pavilion where we'll have nine distilleries this year. And we're going to have, uh, like I said, we're going to have the beer garden area on the old courthouse lawn. Um, and we'll have six local breweries and cideries there, and then we'll have, um, some great food trucks and food vendors in the Feltner lot. Um, so it's going to be really great. We have seven bands this year, so if you just do it by the numbers, we have seven bands, nine distilleries, uh, six breweries and cideries, and, um, 12 food vendors. So you know, it's going to be a lot of fun. People, you will need a, um, if you want to see the bands in Brightbox or the Monument, you will have to purchase a ticket and get a wristband for those. Um, but the rest of the event, the distillery area, the beer garden, the food truck lot, the stage on Buscowan Street are all free and open to the public. So it's basically going to be a big street party in Old Town. So we're really looking forward to it. And if I didn't mention the date, it's September 14th.

Dan Hoffman: 19:44

September 14th, and where can they buy tickets?

Jenny McDonald: 19:46

Um, if you go to enjoyotw. com, that's the Old Town Winchester website. You can find all the information about the event on there. Or, um, you can find our Fiddles and Fiffs, Bluegrass and Bourbon Festival, um, Facebook page. And there's information there as well.

Dan Hoffman: 20:02

Well, thank you guys very much for coming in. Uh, lots happening and, you know, if you've been, uh, if it's been a little too hot for you to go walk around the walking mall, Bye. this summer. Oh boy. Go check it out. Go check it out. The past a week has been spectacular down in the walking mall. So go enjoy it. We're not quite out of summer, but, uh, we're getting little tastes of fall. So go out, enjoy the walking mall. It's a great place. time. It's a safe place to go take your family. And, uh, while you're at it, go check out Fiddles and Fifths. Uh, stay tuned for more coming from Winchester Main Street. Uh, thank you guys very much for coming in.

Jenny McDonald: 20:45

Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Dan Hoffman: 20:59

That is our show. Thanks for joining us for the Rouse Review. Join us again next time when we talk about an interesting topic. We don't know what it's going to be yet, uh, but stay tuned, uh, you'll get another Rouse Review in a couple of weeks. And until then, we'll see you around City Hall.