GREEN RIVER — With no money and being on probation, the Green River Urban Renewal/Main Street Agency (URA) is finding success with its events thanks to community support.
The URA’s Downtown Street Fair took place October 7 and had a great turnout, even though the event was put on with essentially no funding. Wyoming Main Street placed the Green River Main Street program on probation following former director Jennie Melvin’s lack of communication during her tenure. Additionally, the URA’s account had been depleted due to alleged embezzlement by Melvin.
“(Wyoming Main Street) put the Green River Main Street Program on probation because of the personnel and legal issue where the program was not meeting several requirements that are required by the organization. There are documents they are requiring to get completed to get it back on track,” City Administrator Reed Clevenger said.
Due to this, any events put on by the Green River URA are being done primarily with community volunteerism and support.
“We didn’t have funds for porta potties so we relied upon the businesses open for the use of their restrooms. We also relied heavily on social media and word of mouth for getting information out,” Green River URA President Bonnie Tippy said.
Tippy said that the street fair was first started three years ago as an event for the community during the COVID-19 pandemic after Flaming Gorge Days was cancelled. However, it has quickly become a beloved event and the community wanted to see it happen again this year. Tippy said that the event was very reliant upon volunteers.
She reached out to the community to get a team of volunteers together, and they met and split tasks up amongst each other. The event took about three weeks to put together.
“I would say it was a success and a testament to the community and their support for events like this. Truly shows when we all work together, good things happen,” Tippy said.
While Tippy said she never sets expectations for the number of people to attend an event, she was happy to see a great turnout. When measuring the success of the event, she said it’s based on a mixture of positive feedback and turnout.
“You can’t have successful vendors and food trucks if people don’t come to support them, which results in positive feedback. You can also measure [success] by how many small businesses made new contacts. It got people walking and moving downtown for various reasons and some people had not been downtown in a while to see all the new businesses,” she said.
She said that she even knows of an out of town couple who was traveling and stopped at the street fair.
“A couple driving through town from Mississippi drove by, saw the event, stopped, walked through the whole thing twice, and then got a motel room and stayed the night,” Tippy said. According to Tippy, the couple said, “I like the true small town feel of this festival.”
The Unknown Future of the Green River Main Street Program
Tippy said that the URA has hopes that this event will be back next year, however, the fate of the URA is up in the air. There are many rumors circling regarding the city possibly dissolving the agency. While Clevenger said he has not heard these rumors, but the city intends to keep some variation of the program.
“The City of Green River needs to update Wyoming Main Street group by the end of this month of its intent with remaining with Main Street and at what level or if we have decided to take a step back from participating in the Wyoming Main Street Program at the current time. Main Street programs can be operated by the municipality or a volunteer board of directors. There are different levels of the program and the participation requirements and what support you get from that participation level,” Clevenger said. “We are reviewing the plusses and minuses of the level we should participate in and if that should be done at the municipal level or a board level as it currently is done. There is a requirement that we have to have a full time position to be at the highest participating level. That is also being considered as well and if it can be managed within the city itself.”
Clevenger said that if Green River URA does plan to continue with the Wyoming Main Street program, the program would be placed in the aspiring level. This would allow the program to rebuild and learn the fundamentals of the Main Street approach.
“The Aspiring level does not require a staff person to oversee the program initially, but they ask for a commitment of five individuals to constitute the board. If it is decided to delay any further we can still re-enter the Main Street program officially and they will help move Green River through that process at that time,” he said.
“Obviously not all is perfect, but overall, working with what we had, I believe it was a great community event,” Tippy said. The URA’s next event will be the Halloween Parade this Friday, starting at the Clock Tower at 7 p.m.
