February 20, 2008

Main Street Delaware Appoints First Full-Time Executive Director

Frances Jo Hamilton is the new full-time executive director for Main Street Delaware. In that role, she will support Main Street’s mission of promoting and preserving the city’s historic downtown.

As a child, Hamilton grew up loving downtown Delaware, including the Nectar and the five-and-dime store where she sometimes got to pick out a new toy. And as Main Street Delaware’s new full-time executive director, Hamilton will continue to support the rebirth of the historic downtown into a shopping, dining, and cultural arts destination.

“Grandma did everything downtown,” recalls Hamilton, who spent many summers at her grandparents’ Henry Street home. “Downtown was a whole lot different then, but I think we’re coming back around to that time—back to when people park once and go everywhere they need to go.”

As a seven-year Main Street Delaware volunteer and the organization’s former part-time program manager, Hamilton will hit the ground running in her new executive director’s role.

Among the projects high on her to-do list are arranging meetings with community and business groups to explain the role of Main Street Delaware, an Ohio Main Street Community, in helping to promote and preserve the city’s historic downtown. This will include encouraging more people to get involved with the organization and its committees: design, economic restructuring, promotions, and organization and membership.

“A big part of my job will be educating people about what we do and why it matters,” Hamilton says. A few of Main Street Delaware activities include planning the monthly First Friday events, organizing the downtown farmers’ market, publishing the downtown shoppers’ guide, planting the downtown flower baskets, and coordinating the annual Christmas parade and Santa’s House events.

She also plans to continue working with the city to improve signage to direct visitors downtown and to resolve parking issues.

Hamilton also says she is looking forward to meeting Ohio Wesleyan’s incoming president, Rock Jones; his wife, Melissa Lollar Jones; and their family.

“Delaware feeds the college, and the college feeds Delaware,” Hamilton says. “I’m very excited about meeting and working with OWU’s new president. I’d also like to begin incorporating some of the campus’s historic sites into the downtown tours we give.”

Those tours already include a stop at the Nectar, where Hamilton shares news of her childhood teddy bear.

“Somehow, in the midst of a garage sale, my bear disappeared,” Hamilton recalls. “My grandma even placed an ad in the Gazette offering a reward to try and get it back. I never did get my original bear back, but my grandma bought me a new one just like it. I still have that one.”

Hamilton invites anyone interested in learning more about Main Street Delaware or volunteer opportunities to contact her at (740) 362-6050.

– Cole Hatcher