Woodbine, Iowa (pop. 1,459) is our featured rural community this week. Woodbine is a community known for working together to get important — and sometimes very ambitious — community projects done. The result is a thriving small town that has made huge progress in revitalizing both its downtown and the community as a whole. We'll be sharing stories throughout the week of some local leaders and business owners who are making an impact in the community. Today's guest blog post is from Deb Sprecker, Executive Director of the Woodbine Main Street program, who has had a key role in the town’s revival.

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Rural revitalization is a team sport.

A collective push in 2008 to assemble a Woodbine team of community leaders ranging from small business owners to bankers to real estate and development professionals, local government, educators, farmers, retirees and hometown cheerleaders/volunteers resulted in some pretty amazing results. Ten vacancies and the threat of two historic buildings falling in the street in a heap and vanishing motivated the team.

A snapshot of our before and after includes more than $10 million invested downtown through private and public funding sources, over 28 buildings rehabbed (either total restorations or exterior facades), 36 upper-story units added to the district, and an increase in total assessed property values in Main Street’s three-block footprint up $2.5 million.

As a Main Street Iowa Community, one of 54 in the state, we worked the ‘historic preservation as an economic engine’ template to impactful results. We believe the solid work completed by the ‘team’ will sustain our town and propel new housing and other community improvements for years and generations to come. In 2014, Main Street America and the National Trust called the local Main Street office to tell us we were one of three Great American Main Streets that year. Awards are nice, but a thriving community is even better.

A decade ago, Woodbine had good downtown bones, a lot of empty storefronts, and several turn-of-the century two-story buildings with either abandoned or under-developed, upper-story housing opportunity. After twelve years of working together to revitalize downtown, we have a dependable mix of service, entertainment, and retail businesses. School enrollments increase year over year, new housing starts are on the rise, and a new wellness center is slated to open in 2021.

More importantly, the team is still working...some of the faces have changed, but the mission is the same.

Community revitalization demands patience, a good plan, and solid teamwork.