VIENNA — Vienna Main Street hosted a meeting on Sept. 13 at The Maries County Bank to present some of the findings of the Missouri Main Street Connection (MMSC) team visiting the city.

The team came to Vienna as part of a United States Department of Agriculture grant. Their goal was to offer advice to both the Vienna Main Street group and property owners in downtown Vienna.

As part of the MMSC network, Vienna Main Street is working on obtaining a 501(c)(3) designation as a nonprofit organization. The group strives to stimulate economic development through the preservation of Vienna’s historic downtown. MMSC has helped, or is helping, about 170 cities across the state with the same goal.

The team visiting last week included Ben Muldrow, a brand specialist with South Carolina-based economic development firm Arnett Muldrow & Associates; Jim Thompson, an economic vitality specialist with Main Street Iowa, and Randy Wilson, an architect with South Carolina-based Community Design Solutions.

Muldrow presented first. His focus was the branding of both Vienna Main Street and Vienna itself. He said the team had done their best to appropriately scale the advice for a community of Vienna’s size.

Data USA is a web tool Muldrow used during his research. It includes population, diversity, economic, civics, education, housing and health statistics for places around the country. The website includes data on states, counties and cities. Comparison tools allow users to examine data from places side-by-side.

Based on findings by Data USA, Vienna has a population of about 897 people. Muldrow said the number was higher than he had seen from other sources. Exact population figures can be difficult to track in non-census years. The median age is about 33.5 years old. The poverty rate is about 32.7 percent, which Muldrow said is likely due to a high population of retired people without jobs.

Muldrow highlighted some of Vienna’s property data. One statistic he pointed out was Vienna’s 52.5 percent rate of homeownership. He said he usually likes to see a community closer to about 60 percent ownership because a higher rate of homeownership often leads to a more engaged community. The number is not cause for concern, but he said it could benefit the community for some long-term renters to become homeowners.

The average commute time for Vienna residents who work out of town is 29.9 minutes. Muldrow displayed charts showing the distance and direction of residents’ commutes. Many of the commuters went about 10 miles north of Vienna, which suggests jobs at Quaker Windows. The next largest group of commuters goes more than 25 miles to the northwest of Vienna, which suggests jobs in Jefferson City.

Next, Muldrow shifted to Vienna’s branding. He said the city logo was good, but some of the details started to fade away when it got bigger.

“I wanted to give you all something that was a little bit more consistent and was an opportunity for you to reuse it in a way where it felt a little bit more you,” he said.

Muldrow said a few things inspired him as he was going around Vienna. First was the topography and hills coming into town. He also saw inspiration in things he said made Vienna feel small “in a good way,” such as the steeple at Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the shape of buildings downtown and the “very handsome but not over the top” courthouse.

Another goal Muldrow had for the new logo was to set a standard script. He said many scripts vary in how the letter “V” appears, so he wanted to choose a single primary typeface and a complementary typeface to create a stronger brand identity. The scripts he chose are Livermore and Billson Soft.

For the logo’s colors, Muldrow started with Maries R-1’s gold because he knows that color will always have significance in Vienna. Then, he created a complementary color palette using some blues and oranges.

Muldrow said he liked the city slogan “Where roots grow deep,” and he wanted to use it as a base for creating the city’s identity as a destination brand. He combined it with the town’s pride around the school’s Vienna Eagles to create the new slogan “Deep roots, new heights.”

“It combines that history and future,” Muldrow said. “It combines that kind of messaging that you had talked about with this kind of optimistic and pride-based connection.”

The logo Muldrow created combines the slogan, colors and typeface with the imagery of the steeple, courthouse and an eagle. He said as the destination branding for Vienna, the logo is for Vienna Main Street to give to businesses in the community for merchandising.

Muldrow also created a new logo for Vienna Main Street. The logo is a stylized “V” made from three layers. The first is a red “V” to represent Vienna and call back to the “V for Victory” imagery of World War II. The layer above that is blue and wavy to represent the Maries River and the Gasconade River. The third layer is gold and resembles the wings of an eagle.

Along with the Vienna Main Street logo, Muldrow introduced the concept of Vibrant Vienna, which he described as an initiative to tie together the things the MMSC team was suggesting for the city. The initiative could include updating buildings or organizing events such as those the Vienna Chamber of Commerce already hosts each year.

“We’re really focusing on that intersection of people and place,” Muldrow said. “Your goal from a Main Street standpoint is to create vibrancy in the community.”

Muldrow said the team had worked on a handbook that he would give to Vienna Main Street to help guide the Vibrant Vienna plan.

The next topic was signage in the city. Muldrow recommended gateway signs to the north, south and west of the city. He also suggested trailblazer signs on Third Street and Fourth Street because those are the connection points between Highway 63 and the courthouse square. He also said solid-color banners along those streets and the other streets of the square could help people to make the connection to the square as a dynamic place.

The MMSC team members pointed out Vienna’s lack of crosswalks a few times during their meetings with the public. They suggested colorfully branded crosswalks to give some life to the courthouse square.

“When you have visual crosswalks, that tells people ‘We want you to be here,’” Muldrow said.

Thompson presented next about the economic vitality of downtown Vienna. He recommended keeping original copies of business inventories and photos of buildings as they are now so one day Vienna Main Street can compare them and look back at the progress made downtown.

Much of Thompson’s presentation was about how Vienna Main Street volunteers can move forward with fostering an economically dynamic downtown. Some of the work is connecting with property owners and making buildings attractive to businesses looking to rent space. Some of it is connecting with people who could want to start businesses downtown.

“Keep in mind, Main Street is volunteer power,” Thompson said. “You’re going to get as far as you all decide to get. It’s really all about one business, one building at a time. It’s an incremental process.”

Thompson shared stories about other cities participating in Main Street programs.

One in Iowa was a small county seat like Vienna.

It had eight vacant buildings when the team of specialists visited. The only work needed to make the buildings ready for tenants was some cleaning, vacuuming and window-washing. Two weeks after the team left the town, four of the buildings had found businesses to lease the spaces.

“People at home wanting to open a business, very entrepreneurial, couldn’t see their businesses in these buildings,” Thompson said. He said some buildings in Vienna could benefit from offers by volunteers to help clean them up and get them rent-ready.

Thompson described many grant opportunities that could help with fixing up some of the buildings downtown. Tax credits may also be available for reasons such as Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility requirements.

The last advice Thompson shared during his presentation was to avoid concern about competition between businesses.

“As you add more businesses, you will grow your trade area,” he said. “You have a ton of people that live outside the city limits that are regularly driving here anyway. We just want to get a little bit of their money.”

Wilson presented last. He covered five design recommendations for downtown Vienna as a whole. His first recommendation was to add temporary window treatments to vacant buildings to give them more life. Posters in the windows highlighting local people or history could bring character to otherwise drab storefronts.

The second recommendation came in the form of a document Wilson gave to Vienna Main Street that offers suggestions about how to handle vacant buildings in a downtown district.

Wilson’s third recommendation was a series of appearance considerations that could help improve the appearance of downtown Vienna. One suggestion was to hang flower baskets from handrails like the one at the library.

Another appearance consideration was to put in screening for sights, such as dumpsters, that take away from the atmosphere Vienna Main Street is trying to cultivate downtown.

“Walk and drive through your town as if you’ve never been here before,” Wilson said. “Try to see your place through the lens of a guest and (identify) what you’re proud of and what you’d like to change.”

Wilson’s fourth recommendation was to add what he called “vibrancy amenities” to downtown. He said these amenities help introduce color, activity and activation into downtown. Examples include interactive games, musical instruments and public art.

The last recommendation was to update some of the building facades downtown. During the visit, the MMSC team worked with three property owners downtown to come up with ideas for updating the facades while still meeting the needs of the owners. Wilson showed mock ups of what updates could do for the buildings.

In one design, Wilson brought a unifying paint color to two buildings that are connected physically but not visually. The design also removed siding that was not original to the building. A design for another building split it into two spaces, which had been mocked up as an art gallery and a bakery because the building is currently vacant. It also added awnings for more color. Wilson’s last design showed another vacant building as a bar and grill with two smaller food-related businesses around the side. It also gave a unifying look to the building that it did not have before.

“The beautiful thing about your community is two new businesses and everyone is talking,” Muldrow said as the meeting neared its end. “Two buildings get fixed up and everyone notices. Eight banners go up and it makes a huge visual difference.”

Following the meeting, Vienna Main Street President Kelly Barnhart said the organization is “very excited” about the material shown during the presentations.

“I think there is a lot we would like to implement,” she said. “Of course the more community support, the more we will be able to accomplish in reviving our historic downtown.”