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FARMVILLE – Now that downtown is recovering from the pandemic, the Farmville Downtown Partnership (FDP) is ready to get back to promoting these businesses.

The FDP has served the community for around 10 years. The partnership went through significant changes in 2020 when its director left and the COVID-19 lockdown caused a massive strain on the Main Street businesses. The partnership merged with the Farmville Area Chamber of Commerce in order to keep going during this time.

This year, things changed again. The board members of the FDP decided to return to how it operated before the pandemic, now that businesses are open and back to normal. The partnership’s mission is to bring residents, merchants and students of Farmville together to preserve downtown’s role as the center of the historic community and plan for the town’s future as somewhere to live, learn, open a business and visit.

Farmville Downtown Partnership adds director

To better fulfill this mission, the partnership decided to go through with some changes. The first change was to bring on Nancy Alexander as the executive director. She started part-time in August and now that she’s moved to Farmville, she will start as full-time in October.

“They were waiting for things to calm down,” said Alexander. “Now that everything has restabilized, the board decided to become more active and move forward again.”

Alexander brings several decades of experience to the job. She has been in charge of special events at James Madison’s Montpelier estate, managed the Main Street program for the town of Orange, designed the Small Towns program for the state of Kentucky and served as the statewide Main Street program manager in Kentucky.

The board also decided to separate from the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has a broader mission of promoting businesses across the town that are part of the chamber and proving benefits for its members. The partnership focuses more on preserving and promoting the Main Street and historic downtown area.

Now on its own again, the partnership is turning back to the traditional Main Street emphasis following the format of focusing on economic development, promotion, organization and design. According to Alexander, the partnership board plans to work with businesses to put on events. They also plan to use the historical buildings and keep their historical design while making sure the property is still buyable.

“Right now we’re looking at how we can promote what we have,” said Alexander. “There’s a lot of upper floor space we can use for offices or apartments. We have many opportunities we can utilize.”

The partnership has a lot of plans in the works as we quickly approach the holiday season. Right now they are focusing on uplifting existing events and building upon them in future years.