City part of Main Street program

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — The city will soon be a part of the national Main Street program again.

Officials for the Gallup Chamber of Commerce said this week that the program, which promotes downtown development in communities all across the nation, has named Gallup as one of five communities that will be added to the program this year.

Gallup will be added this fall, said Lindsay Mapes, who is the chamber official who is overseeing that effort.

Gallup was part of the program in the 1990s when the Downtown Development Association was in existence but once the association was disbanded, its membership was discontinued.

There is no money involved, but as a member, Gallup will be getting technical support from the program in an effort to revitalize Gallup's downtown area.

Among the things that the program will do include:

• Design matters - street redesigning and improvements to the downtown area including planting trees and installing benches.
  
  
• Promotion - helping to come up with a promotional campaign to bring people to the downtown area.
  
  
• Economic restructuring - urging current business in the downtown area to stay, recruiting new businesses and rezoning to make the area more business friendly.
  
  
• Organization - helping community leaders and the chamber to set up a downtown committee to look at ways to revitalize the area, raise funds and connect with the community.

This all fits in, said Mayor Bob Rosebrough, into what he envisions a new downtown area to look like.

Since taking office in March of 2003, Rosebrough has been looking at ways to bring more people to the downtown area.

In the works is a new city/county plaza which he said should be ready for the 2006 tourist season. A new mural project is expected to get underway this year that will allow visitors to the downtown area to take a walking tour and learn more about the history of the town.

"The downtown area could be a thriving place," said Rosebrough.

There have been some snags in his plans.

The idea of having one-way traffic downtown hasn't gone anywhere and neither has the idea of angled parking downtown on Historic Highway 66. The city is still trying to resolve problems with the American Bar.

But Rosebrough and chamber officials say that getting the Main Street people involved will only help the downtown area and could result in new ideas that would make the downtown area more attractive to businesses as well as people who may want to go there.