By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
THREE RIVERS — Two finalists were named last week for the position of executive director for the Three Rivers Downtown Development Authority.
The DDA’s board selected Honor Flight Network National Program Director Bobbie Bradley and current DDA Administrative Assistant Angie Metty as its two finalists for the directorship, following interviews with four candidates on Thursday, Nov. 7.
Both candidates will be moving on to final interviews with the DDA as well as local business representatives and stakeholders sometime within the next couple of weeks. The final interviews, which will be held at HG Real Estate in downtown Three Rivers and will be open to the public, will take place between 8:45 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 25.
Whoever is ultimately selected for the job will replace Cameron Mains, who resigned in early September.
“We had a tremendous amount of people apply for the job, and we selected four people to move on just to this round we’re on today, and we just had two superstars out of the batch,” DDA Board Chair Andrew George said. “We’re happy we have that enthusiasm in our town for downtown right now.”
Bradley and Metty were selected after interviews with them and two other candidates, former Constantine Village Clerk Roberta Tonkin and former Bair Lake Bible Camp Program Intern Jacob Stocking.
Each candidate was asked a series of questions pertaining to a number of categories relevant to the job of a DDA director, including attracting businesses, their history with different projects, and promoting downtown.
The candidates were first asked, though, why they wanted the director position. Bradley said she had a “lot of interest” of being active in the community, having been in Three Rivers for 30 years and recently adopting grandchildren.
“We have a lot of interest in staying in downtown, being here in the community and just watching it grow,” Bradley said. “We watched it over the years with our girls, we kind of expanded as we became empty-nesters, but we’re really focused back into Three Rivers now. I really like being a part of the community and watching it grow.”
Metty said she was interested in the job because she is also a business owner in the district, having owned Reflections Hair Studio in town for over five years.
“I hear about the downtown and our community, and I want to see it succeed and I want us to become a vibrant, welcoming place for everyone to come and join,” Metty said.
As far as projects go, Bradley said that the Honor Flights for local war veterans to go to Washington, D.C. would be considered the big projects she’s worked on, with lots of items that go into organizing and planning one, both with Talons Out and with the national Honor Flight organization.
“With the national program, I was also a tour director, and I was making all the travel arrangements. So, if I had 150 people, I was looking at creating commercial travel packets, tracking them across the country, doing follow-up. Most of these veterans haven’t traveled in 60 years, so it’s holding their hands, giving them updates as they go along, getting them excited and keeping nerves down,” Bradley said.
Metty, when it came to projects, mentioned local events that she has been helping out with in her relatively short time as Administrative Assistant, such as Christmas Around Town, which she is co-leading organizing for.
“We’ve raised over $6,675 for that event, and it’s in collaboration with the Promotions Committee,” Metty said.
When it came to attracting new businesses and keeping existing ones thriving, Bradley said that doing so would involve looking at ways to create excitement about the Three Rivers community.
“How do we get that Little League family who comes out to Armstrong Park downtown to spend some money when they’re in between games? How do we get those kayakers to stop off the river here and come downtown to spend money?” Bradley said. “Do we create focus groups to find out what we need to do some draws, and then find out what those need are, so we can go out and find those types of businesses to bring downtown?”
Metty said attracting new businesses would start with working with the DDA’s Economic Vitality Committee, and come up with a plan to market empty storefronts.
“To attract new business, make them want to come down here,” Metty said. “We’ve also had a couple of corridor surveys, which has given us a lot of insight as to what people want, like how much they come through the area, what they want to see downtown.”
As far as promoting downtown, Bradley said making sure DDA info is on the city website would be key, and in the bigger picture, potentially advocate making the city website a “one-stop shop” for all information and resources about the city, events going on, and more.
“This is something I did at Honor Flight for our leadership across the country when I was in the COO role. If I’m going to come to Three Rivers, I don’t want to have to look at three or four different websites. Let’s create a page that’s going to have a link to Armstrong, or a link to go to Meyer Broadway, or what events do we have going on over at Scidmore and downtown, what’s going to be happening in the different areas of the community,” Bradley said. “If you give people a one-stop shop, where they can just click a link, they are so much happier than having to go to three or four different websites. It can take them to different websites, but you want it to go to that one singular place to make it easier for them.”
Metty said when it comes to promoting downtown, she said social media, radio, newspapers, and digital outlets would be “big avenues” to do so.
“Social media is huge,” Metty said. “I’ve also, after two years, got our website updated to be current with what’s going on, and somebody else helped me get Instagram going.”
George said he’s looking forward to the final interviews, and hopes to get as much input from downtown stakeholders as possible.
“Ultimately, it’s going to be the board’s choice on what candidate we move forward with, but we want as much input as we can get from local stakeholders,” George said.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
