Mount Olive town Commissioner Barbara Kornegay and Town Manager Jammie Royall look over a map of downtown Mount Olive Friday, Feb. 17, prior to a Zoom meeting with Liz Parham from the N.C. Dept. of Commerce. The meeting was to discuss downtown planning (Steve Herring|mountolivbetribune.com)
Inclement weather and vehicle problems forced the cancellation of a Friday, Feb. 17, tour of downtown Mount Olive by a state Dept. of Commerce official.
However, it was quickly replaced by a Zoom meeting with Liz Parham to discuss Mount Olive’s downtown planning efforts. Parham is a representative for the $175,000 Rural Transformation Grant the town has been awarded by the N.C. Dept. of Commerce.
The town has yet to receive the funding, however, Texas-based Retail Strategies has been hired to do the plan, town Commissioner Barbara Kornegay said.
“The company has done a number of downtown master plans with towns that have colleges or universities as part of them,” Kornegay noted. “They did the one for Wilson. So, they were actually the only company that answered our call for bids. I think they are going to be super.
“They are very experienced and excited, but we can’t get them in here and get started until we get all of the yeses and nos with the Dept. of Commerce.”
Parham, Kornegay, Town Manager Jammie Royall and Town Clerk Sherry Davis were joined online by Julie Beck, Mount Olive Area Chamber of Commerce president.
Since the tour had to be canceled, Parham was shown a promotional video of downtown shot by drone.
“It is not that Mount Olive is all that different from other small towns because we have a railroad track in the center of it,” Kornegay said. “That is common in North Carolina.
“But it (video) might be something to help her be oriented because we obviously don’t have the capability to do a real tour today. We were going to take her down to R&R (Brewing) and let her meet (owner) Ryan (Roberts), one of our up-and-coming entrepreneurs.”
Kornegay said the tour easily could have been walked, but had been planned as a car tour.
“The meeting via Zoom went fine,” Kornegay stressed. “We showed the video about the town which we submitted a few years ago to the hometown contest.
“We have to get a few more documents to them (state), but we can go ahead and get Retail Strategies to send us a contract to get started. I am waiting for those documents to get to her before I reach out to the Retail Strategies people.”
The company will help the town develop a master plan of how the downtown area can be improved, she said.
“The ultimate goal will be to increase revenues for the town by having a more vibrant downtown commercial district and restore use of vacant buildings and increase the business district traffic with more attractive streets, buildings, and events,” Kornegay noted.
Work should be starting soon, she pointed out.
“So this (meeting) is just a follow-up to that,” Kornegay said. “We got notice back in November that we were going to get the funding and then we had to go through a few hoops because we have historic buildings in our town.
“The Dept. of Cultural Resources had to review everything even though we are not planning to touch a brick. This is a plan, not actual construction of anything. I guess they are trying to make sure that we don’t plan to change any historic buildings in a detrimental way.”
The review took two months, she said.
Parham contacted Kornegay and told her she was “good to go,” but that a site visit was required as well.
And while the tour was canceled, Parham does not have to visit now, Kornegay noted.
Parham did request copies of the town’s policies and procedures.
Kornegay said she did not know about any previous downtown plans the town has done that were not followed up on.
“But you can be sure that if I am in charge of this, we will get into it with the public as we already have we had numerous focus groups before I even applied for the grant,” she said.
“However, the grant allows for focus groups to be a part of this process.”
While not part of the planning grant, Kornegay is working on two other projects including a farmers market and an amphitheater.
Kornegay is preparing a proposal to the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund to build a market on the corner of South Center and Pollock streets.
The town already owns the land and an architectural plan was created prior to COVID/pandemic years.
The town is waiting on building cost estimates. The proposal deadline is March.
“If you have ideas about the market, please contact me at bkornegay@nc.rr.com,” Kornegay said.
The amphitheater would be located at the corner of Center and John streets on property owned by the Baptist Church.
This project is just in the idea stage, she said.
