Discover Downtown Westbrook is Maine’s 10th Main Street community. The organization was formed as the Downtown Westbrook Coalition in November 2014 as a Downtown Network community, and received its official Main America Street accreditation from the Maine Downtown Center on November 9, 2017. On that evening we also changed our name to Discover Downtown Westbrook to show we are more action oriented. We use the Four-Point Approach framework created by the National Main Street Center, which was established by the National Trust in 1980. This national group has a proven successful record at downtown revitalization, with thousands of volunteer-driven organizations all around the country.
You can find out more about it here, but this is a snippet: “Main Street-style transformation is a combination of art and science: communities first need to learn about the local economy, its primary drivers, and its regional context (the science), but they also need to convey that special sense of place through storytelling, preserving the older and historic structures that set it apart, broad and inclusive civic engagement, and marketing (the art).”
The Four Points are Design, Economic Vitality, Organization, and Promotion, and each point has a team that works on a different aspect of revitalization. Visit our committee page for more details, or click here for a document with information on all the committees.
If you’re interested in volunteering, contact our director!
