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hi everybody thank you so much for joining our webinar today i'm jackie sweihart i'm the indiana main street coordinator for okra and today we're going to talk about what the new application process will look like for communities who are not currently designated by indiana main street but who want to apply for designation so if you're here joining us for the webinar you likely already know that indiana main street is a program uh we've been a program since 1985 and part of that program really the goal is to help communities revitalize the economy appearance and image of their downtown commercial districts using the national main street center's successful main street approach and then in 2005 the indiana main street program transitioned to the indiana office of community and rural affairs where it's currently managed indiana main street provides access to information provides help getting focused and community support and guidance to individuals and organizations who are interested in downtown revitalization this past year we were fortunate enough to add a second staff person to the indiana main street team and while she's not here with us on this recorded webinar today i did want to take a moment to introduce the two program managers for indiana main street so i'm jackie sweyhart like i said at the top i act as the indiana main street coordinator and then abby chapman my colleague is the indiana main street manager of outreach and organization so while i'll introduce your community liaisons later in this webinar i just wanted to let you know that the two of us are here to help you through this process so you can always reach out to us and i'll have our contact information on the last slide as well for a bit of background before we dive into the application process itself if you were familiar with the previous application process you're going to notice today that we've made some pretty significant changes to how this process works moving forward and the reasons why we did that are really because throughout 2019 and most of 2020 okra instituted a moratorium in order to evaluate the scope and mandate of its main street program and during that period okra also suspended accepting new applications for designated or for designation until evaluation could be finalized and ultimately what we landed on was the creation of a new level system and a new program application now we are going to have an in-depth webinar on the new level system which will be recorded live on november 12th so if you're listening to this webinar before november 12th i encourage you to register for that webinar to learn more about the level system and if you are listening to this after november 12th of 2020 you can always go back and watch that recorded webinar on our website but both webinars will have a webinar on november 12th and then a webinar on november 13th that second webinar on november 13th will go over any lingering questions you may have about the levels and those both will be recorded and available for your reference but for our purposes today i did want to briefly highlight each of the levels and distinguish one from the other so that you can get a sense as to what level your organization may be wanting to apply for so we have three levels within our indiana mainstream program moving forward we have our nationally accredited main street groups or what we call noms and these are organizations who are interested in applying to enter the indiana main street program who currently meet all of the accreditation standards set forth by the national main street center and we'll touch on what those are later in the webinar and then we have another level indiana accredited main street or what we're calling items and these are organizations interested in applying to enter the indiana main street program who are working the national main street four-point approach but they might lack a paid staff person or a paid membership to the national main street center so really the the biggest difference between these two levels um that indiana accredited main street level is is not or they are missing that staff person or paid membership and then really what's new here is this third level okra's downtown affiliate network or what we refer to as odan these are organizations interested in applying to enter the indiana main street program whose organizations may lack the capacity or the resources necessary to work the national main street four-point approach holistically these may be organizations who prefer to specialize in event related activities only or they may lack the physical or historical capacity required to qualify as a mainstream organization so i do want to emphasize here that this this new level oprah's downtown affiliate network they are not designated as a main street program these are for communities and for programs who are really getting their feet wet with main street and they want the opportunity to learn and to grow or they may be very content uh focusing on event related activities and just want to keep in touch with what's happening with indiana main street so keep in mind that this webinar today is focused primarily on those interested in becoming a designated indiana accredited main street program so that middle level you see on the screen there will be a separate application for those seeking designation as an ocr's downtown affiliate member but because that application is a condensed version of the one we'll discuss today we won't be covering it here in this webinar if you are interested in applying for designation as an ogre's downtown affiliate network member please refer to our oprah website to see what the questions for that application look like and also reach out to your okra community liaison to discuss any challenges you may have before we get into some of the logistics of the application there are a couple of notes i wanted to address so as a trademark program under the national mainstreet center a community or district may not call itself an indiana main street nor made employ an indiana main street manager or director without an application an official designation by okra so you can organize as a main street organization but you cannot affiliate with indiana main street until you receive that official designation and communities are encouraged to organize and implement the four-point approach prior to their designation and prior to applying for that designation designation by indiana main street permits a main street community to use any and all indiana main street branding and program association so i know there may be a lot of organizations and communities out there who've been waiting a while to apply for their designation so i wanted to address timeline right away here's the plan for accepting applications in 2020 and into 2021. so on november 9th we're going to announce that applications will be officially opened again if you are a community interested in applying this year you will need to submit an intent to apply which will be due by december 4th i have an example a template for you of an intent to apply that you can use and i'll show you that for the end of the webinar applications won't be due until march 5th of 2021 so you have some time that's about four months to complete the application and submit it and then community liaisons will consult with local programs and the project management team as needed throughout november and february to help assist with application development and then one big thing that's going to change moving forward is that we're going to have a scoring committee in place who will review indiana main street applications and that scoring committee will meet in march of 2021 to score applications so the indiana main street council will then meet to hear and and present recommendations by the end of april 2021 so that scoring committee they will present their recommendations to the indiana main street council where they will be discussed and then they will be confirmed recommendations by the end of april 2021 and then after some internal review at okra we will announce incoming main street communities formally in may of 2021. so moving into some of the application logistics we will have an application checklist on the website to help communities prepare their applications you can use this as a reference at any time while preparing your application materials really there are only two things to submit an intent to apply and a complete application so as i mentioned before the intent to apply must be emailed to the liaison and the state coordinator prior to december 4th that way we know that we need to set up an account for your organization on our indiana grants management system that's another change from the past we are no longer using surveymonkey we have built out applications in our indiana grants management system and that will be the only way that we accept applications moving forward so once we receive the intent to apply we at okra will will go ahead and set up an account for you on gms and once you're working on your application you will need to submit applicant information supplemental information that demonstrates community support that could be newspaper articles public meeting notices etc we strongly encourage those they are not required but we do strongly encourage them we also want to see a resolution from the city or town government that's submitted with the application a proposed budget a work plan with activities that align with the main street approach we want to see some maps which i'll get into in more detail here in a bit and then we want to see five to 15 high quality images and these images must show evidence of a consistent amount of historic commercial buildings in the proposed main street program area and we'll talk a bit more about that as well here in a moment and then we would like to see image narratives these image narratives should really be concise but tell the story that explains the history of your town and provides information about the current state of downtown we don't need to see names of individual businesses or building owners unless they are historically significant or otherwise relevant to your community so if a person for example owns multiple buildings in the program area then it might make sense to include that information but otherwise don't feel like you have to and then we're also looking for letters of support these letters should demonstrate support from different segments of the community including merchants civic and historic organizations as well as citizens so we will be asking for maps of the district but the application itself will request two separate maps so in that first map we're looking for the proposed program area and we're asking you to include in this section a map outlining the proposed program area and we also want to see the things listed on your screen here boundaries of the official business district boundaries of the proposed main street program area locations of nearby commercial centers malls and tourist attractions so maybe that's an art district or a riverfront district depending on what you have in your community we're looking for boundaries of any local state or federally designated historic districts community development or urban renewal areas within the downtown or adjacent areas and then also looking for boundaries and descriptions of any zoning districts within the downtown or adjacent areas and then on that second map we're really looking for some identification that supports the narrative for images so this map should be marked to identify the images presented in the narrative the object here is to show cohesive historic fabric you can use google earth or google maps whatever makes the most sense for you to use will be fine as long as whatever you submit to the grants management system is easy for reviewers to look at and understand what it is you're trying to communicate about your community and then with the digital images are the images should show resources that would make your community a successful mainstream program so in addition to overall shots we encourage you to include a few images of important individual structures in the proposed program area so that might be a post office a courthouse city hall banks department stores anything like that and then to show some broader context some significant resources from outside the program area could be included like college campuses historic sites or industrial sites views of empty lots or urban parts should be shown if they relate to the buildings otherwise you don't need to feel like you need to include them if there is a unique residential neighborhood within walking distance of the proposed program area only overall representative images should be shown and described in the narrative please avoid taking any excessive shots of individual houses remember main street is a commercial revitalization program any poor quality images or ones that do not adequately show evidence of historic commercial fabric will reflect poorly on the application and please when you do submit your photos title each each image with the city or town name and a number which will correspond to the submitted narrative provide only um images that will load into gms your typical photos will probably work just fine but here's an example of an image title that would work very well you could name it by your town picture number one so that it corresponds with that narrative and then we do ask that you attach each image separately and not as a word document with each image and then just some helpful hints as you're working on your application follow the application format when answering questions please keep your responses brief but do provide complete information we can't fill in the gaps especially if we're still all working from home and we're unable to visit your community directly we need to make sure that we have complete information to get a sense of your community and what it has to offer also work with your local historical society your library or other organizations to help tell the story of your downtown district this research should be reflected in the image narratives a big part of main street is the historic fabric of a community and so we really want to be able to understand that story of yours the proposed mainstream program area should be well defined and also highlight the strongest most dense historic commercial core of your community applicants must demonstrate a commitment to actively participate in growing the local program for a minimum of four or five years developing a sustainable effort through incremental progress over time is critical for success in main street so the intent should be to continue after this initial period we also would like to see that you're offering a competitive salary in the proposed budget to attract a qualified program manager and job security by providing stable program funding and benefits and while a salaried position is not a requirement to be an indiana accredited main street uh your your application will be much more compelling if you have either built that in um immediately or as a long-term goal within the next three to five years for example and then the budget should include funds for professional development and related travel expenses which are required for the program manager or executive director if there is one now it's really important to us at okra that we take a moment to address some common misconceptions about what main street is the reason we're implementing these programmatic changes with the new level system and the new application process is because quite frankly we're upping the bar for what it means to be a designated indiana main street program this emphasis on quality over quantity is really an intentional effort on our part to better align our coordinating program with main street america and their standards and expectations we've come to realize that many main street programs in indiana are focused primarily on events and while events are imperative to any main street organization and tie in to the point of promotion we all know that main street is intended to be much more than just events mainstream programs are not just party planners they ar intended to be economic development organizations who work the main street four-point approach holistically and what we don't want to continue seeing moving forward are communities organizing and establishing a main street program for the sole sake of being eligible for grants indiana main street is not and has never been a grant program main street is meant to be a long-term community-driven volunteer program yes sometimes there are great opportunities attached to a program's designation but that's not what the motivation should be for those looking to apply for designation we are looking to see that applying communities have really thought through their sustainability plans and are in this for the long haul lastly main street programs should as a best practice be independent from other organizations in their communities like an edc or a chamber that's because the mainstream approach is truly exclusive to main street and while other community organizations may find some overlap in the work they do main street brings its own unique approach and opportunities to the table this doesn't mean that these groups should not work closely together on activities because they should but we are really looking for that independence as an organization because that provides the freedom to work the main street approach as intended again all of these misconceptions and the reason why we bring them up um it really plays into us improving our standards and laying out what the expectations are for those looking to apply okay so how will this work i i did touch on this in the timeline but i kind of wanted to go over this one more time after a letter of intent is submitted an okra community liaison will coordinate a meeting with the community to discuss their application and they will work with the indiana mainstream coordinator to create an account on the indiana grants management system as i mentioned earlier only applications submitted via the grants management system will be considered now we do have the questions available for you to look at ahead of time on our website but please know that you cannot use those questions on the website to create an application and submit it via email or mail it has to all the questions have to be answered via the grants management system and then the okra community liaison will provide ongoing technical assistance throughout the application process as needed dependent upon their availability applications will then be evaluated independently by ocr staff plus indiana main street council members and likely also a representative from the national main street center each reviewer's score will be averaged which will create a recommendation to present to the indiana main street council so that first step of reaching out to your community liaison i just want to make sure that everybody is aware who their community liaison is you can find this map and this contact information on the okra website as well if this gives you a snapshot based on your county and what region of the state you're in who your community liaison will be i encourage you to reach out to them early on in this process just so that they can help you as best as they can in terms of the application itself the biggest change from how applications were accepted in the past is that we're now using specific criteria to evaluate applicants on these criteria will provide guidance for application reviewers so that there's more consistency with how applicants are evaluated each criteria will have a certain amount of points attached to it with different criteria bearing more weight than others so applicants will be judged by the following criteria resulting in a maximum potential score of 100 points each section of the application is divided into the following categories although the evaluators may consider all the information provided in that application holistically when making their final scoring decisions but overall these are the five criterion historic commercial fabric and historic character community and private sector support public sector support and financial environment demonstrated need and then there is some room for discretionary evaluation and we'll go into each of these in a little bit more detail so the first criterion that historic commercial fabric and historic character we're really looking for indiana accredited main street communities and nationally accredited main street communities to possess a commercial historic district and actively utilize historic preservation as a tool for economic development a historic preservation ethic and what that means is defined by okra and it has been approved by the indiana main street council and mainstream america as the following which i'll show you here on the next slide before moving to the next slide i did want to make sure i mentioned that this criterion is worth 25 points which is the most amount of points out of all of the criterion that you'll see today but something we are really excited to introduce as a change to the program is our new definition of what it means to possess a historic preservation ethic moving forward our definition will be split into three different options so you may meet this requirement of having a historic preservation epic if you have a commercial district whose majority of architecture is at least 50 years old maintains historic integrity and historic fabric and is significant in american history and or architecture at either the national state or local level or you could meet this by having a commercial district that includes cultural history as part of their preservation ethic and emphasizes authentic stories of place or you could have a combination of the two definitions so you know technically a community without historic buildings could still apply and be accredited at the indiana indiana accredited main street level even if they were missing historic buildings in their downtown we understand that things can happen there can be fires uh natural disasters that that remove those historic buildings from your downtown um so there is an option here built in where you can focus more on your cultural history or your physical history or a combination of both i will say uh your application may be slightly less competitive if there are no historic buildings in your downtown um you would have to score pretty strongly on the other criterion since you noticed and i mentioned that this criterion is worth the most amount of points at 25 but it is still definitely possible and we made this change to try to be more inclusive of communities who may not have the historic fabric in their community that others may have the second criterion is that community and private sector support and this is really demonstrating community and private sector support for the program overall as well as the capability of the applicant to successfully implement the main street program again this goes back to it being a volunteer driven program a main street program will not be successful unless they have community and private sector support so that's another reason why you see that this is worth 24 points for this criterion just slightly less than the historic preservation epic similarly for criterion 3 we're looking at public sector support and financial capacity this demonstrates the financial capability to employ a full-time manager fund a local main street program and support downtown related projects this is also worth 24 points and then looking at criterion four this focuses more on the physical capacity and business environment so we're looking for a distinctive and variety of business activity conducted in the proposed mainstream program and this is worth 14 points criterion five we're looking at demonstrated need we want to see that there is a need for the main street program and that that need is clearly communicated essentially we're looking for why this particular program and why now so this is worth 13 points and then there is some room for discretionary scoring no specific application section or questions where these points need to go toward there is a maximum of four points available for reviewers to score discretionary points so scoring committee members may give up to four additional points to signify notable representation of need preservation or economic effort or financial capacity that goes beyond the minimum requested in the application and each member who's scoring and reviewing applications will provide a rationale for those points we will go over how mainstream america's national accreditation standards of performance play into level designation in the recorded webinars i mentioned earlier uh but i did want to briefly briefly highlight some of that information here because it plays into the application so these five criterion we just went through in the application are based on the 10 standards set forth by main street america so if you're working through your application and you're wondering to yourself why are they asking for this piece of information it's because mainstream america is expecting to see evidence of these five criterion as referenced in their standards of accreditation as a reminder applicants for the noms level the nationally accredited level who currently do not have an indiana main street designation at any level will have to meet all 10 standards and while i think it'll be extremely uncommon for a community to come straight into the program as a nationally accredited main street program there is the option for that that community would have to meet all 10 of these standards right off the bat and while we're talking about nationally accredited main street communities here i'll also mention that for communities who are currently designated as an indiana accredited main street program for those who are designated as ions and want to move up to a nationally accredited level you will not have to fill out a paper application rather you will go through an in-person interview process with okra and the national main street center to evaluate your readiness for that level so when you are ready for that that point to move up a level that is something that will also occur during that annual window of accepting applications that is something that we will encourage you to reach out to your community liaison and let them know that you're interested and ready for that next step and then we will coordinate with you on a case-by-case basis for indiana accredited main streets these standards and and what we require for level designation again will be covered more thoroughly in those upcoming webinars but again just briefly i wanted to note that iams will need to meet eight of the ten standards in order to remain accredited basically items must meet all of the expectations of noms except for having paid staff and a paid membership to the national mainstream center and then for the odan application this will be much more succinct and the criterion will be different they will be evaluated on meeting three of the four criterion that you see on the screen here those being historic commercial fabric and historic character work plan board of directors and committees mission vision and need each section will have fewer questions than the ims and noms levels and so the application is much shorter and more minimalistic again that's because this level is really for those programs who aren't quite working the four-point approach holistically and maybe aren't quite where they need to be in order to be labeled a designated ministry program so this level is really for those who are either content focusing primarily on event related activities which is very okay or it's for those who are working toward growth in all four points but there will be a separate application for the odan level it will not be based on the criterion that we've walked through individually today it will be based on the four standards that you see on your screen here and we will only expect these communities to be meeting three of the four it can be any of the three and before you begin the application before you just jump in and start on it we really encourage you to look over the application questions on the okra website there are just too many questions on the application itself to talk through one by one here on this webinar so i just wanted to mostly go over a high level overview of what you can expect from the application but before you do start to apply before you reach out to your okra community liaison please look over the application questions on the website to make sure you are ready as an organization to start down this path similarly we will have a scoring rubric on the website so that you can see exactly how the scoring review panel will evaluate your application and we encourage you to look over that as well again as a way to do some self-reflection and to determine your readiness to embark on this application and designation for this year the scoring rubric i can um i i will actually just leave you to find this on the website because i don't think i can click on it here but it does exist as well as the sample letter of intent to apply both of these documents you'll be able to find as word documents on the website you can also reach out to your oprah community liaison if you'd like copies of these and you're unable to find it on the website in terms of actually submitting the application i did want to go through a quick walk through so after an interested applicant has worked with their community liaison and the program manager to create an account on the grants management system they can access the application by going to the link that i've provided here once we set you up an account on the back end of things you will get whoever you have identified as your primary point of contact for the application that person will receive an email that email will come from an automated message it will probably be called something like indiana grants management and it will instruct that person to create a password it's really important that whoever that point of contact is who's working on the application and leading this effort remembers what their email address is and the password that they created in order to log in in the future please be sure to write that down but when you get to the link the screen will look like this you will log in using your email address and the password created after receiving that automated email once you're logged in you'll be on the home page you're going to want to scroll down and look for this section that i have circled in blue it'll say the office of community and rural affairs and that's exactly where you want to be within that section you then want to click on indiana main street program application which you see i have the arrow pointing to here and then on the application page you're going to select which application you'd like to pursue out of the three that we've touched on today if you are wanting to join as an oakrs downtown affiliate network member you would click on that to begin that application same with the indiana credited main street and nationally accredited main street and then from there you just complete the application the great thing about the grains management system is that you can close the site you can walk away and you can come back to it later and all of your information will be saved it will be saved automatically you don't have to click save and then close once you put it in there it'll save however we do encourage you to have your application information saved somewhere else for your reference one thing we cannot do with the grants management system is download a pdf copy of your application and share that with you so if you're wanting to have a copy of this information for yourself i encourage you to house that on a different format maybe excel maybe word whatever works best for you and again just a reminder please write down your login and password if this is an application that you are working on for a four month period um it's likely you might forget if you don't write it down so we encourage you to put that somewhere and then when you get to the end of the application it's very likely you might see a page like this we do have all of the questions on the application as a r quired field and that's because they are all very important if there is a particular question or field where it's maybe just not applicable to you and your community and you have no idea what to put there and it won't let you submit without entering into information go ahead and put a zero or n a or something to signify that you are skipping that question because you will not be able to submit without putting something in the field but it is nice because at the end when you try to submit it'll show you exactly what you're missing like you see on the screen here and then you can go back and enter that information and that's really it in terms of the walk through i know that this is a big change for a lot of people and there may be a lot of questions as you navigate this new process i encourage you to reach out to myself my information is on the screen abby chapman who i introduced earlier will also be there to provide assistance and then of course as always your oprah community liaison they're really the front door to state government and i encourage you if you haven't already make connections with them because they will be a great asset to you throughout this process but beyond that please please reach out if you do have questions you can always reference this webinar as needed and we look forward to working with you throughout this new process so thank you for joining today