Our Town Coshocton hosts annual spring dinner

Our Town Coshocton hosted its annual spring dinner March 12 at the Coshocton County Career Center.

Hailey Helter, the executive director of Our Town Coshocton, was looking for an opportunity to serve the community. She is a graduate of Coshocton High School with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Ashland University.

"We are hosting our annual spring reception for our donors and business sponsors,” she said. “This is a time where our donors, businesses that sponsor us and our volunteers can come together for a celebration of our previous years. All donations we receive from individuals and businesses from the city and county support events that we have throughout the year.”

Our Town has an economic vitality committee, a design committee, a promotions committee and an organizations committee, three of which have just started within the last few months.

“The promotions committee is in charge of the Miracle on Main Street Parade and events, the pub crawls, shop hops and things like that,” Helter said. “Our economic vitality committee is geared toward business outreach, bringing business investors into our downtown area. Our program committee is making sure that we are doing volunteer recruitment retention, looking for sources of funding, and our design is looking at doing beautification projects like Clean Up Downtown Days. We used to do one block at a time, and we are going to bring that back this month beginning in March and hopefully through November on the third Saturday of the month. Our focus is on the historic district, Main Street, a little bit of Sixth Street and Roscoe Village.”

Culinary arts students, a mixture of juniors and seniors, worked together under the direction of chef Mike Cichon to prepare a meal for everyone. They made a variety of desserts with everything from red velvet cheesecake to divine chocolate cupcakes, miniature pies, a spinach and bacon quiche, pork loin, barbecued chicken bites, all kinds of veggies, brioche with honey and more.

Jason Duff, guest speaker from the Small Nation Team in Bellefontaine, Ohio, offered lessons learned from the “Hustle Hard Approach” to small towns across the country.

"In just 10 years, the Small Nation Team — that’s us and our motley crew of amazing, hard-working small business owners — has completely transformed downtown Bellefontaine, Ohio," Duff said.

Using their “Hustle Hard Approach,” they have managed to renovate more than 56 historic buildings and storefronts that had been sitting empty for years. Next, they recruited tenants for more than 30 new business ideas to bring life back to their downtown area. Those businesses allowed them to create more than 190 local jobs. The combination of retail, restaurant and residential has brought their small-town Main Street back to life.

“Today, our small town is open, active and engaged,” Duff said. “The once-crumbling buildings are once again standing strong. The energy of new ideas and new vision has generated new potential and possibilities. The success of one has attracted the interest of another. More vibrant, hard-working entrepreneurs are interested in bringing their ideas and energy to our community.”