Contact: Leah Barbour
Photo by: Submitted
STARKVILLE, Miss.--When Chickasaw County community leaders contacted Mississippi State University's Carl Small Town Center, they wanted to discuss ways to connect the Tanglefoot Trail to downtown Houston and the Natchez Trace Parkway.
The CSTC is the service and research arm of MSU's College of Architecture, Art and Design, and the center works with officials, citizens and organizations to improve quality of life in towns throughout the Magnolia State, said Leah Kemp, CSTC assistant director.
Houston is the southernmost community along the Tanglefoot Trail, she explained. At present, the end of the 44-mile, rails-to-trails cycling/pedestrian pathway is a vacant lot, but Houston leaders want to change that.
"There is currently no way for cyclists to get from the trail to the nearby downtown or the Trace," Kemp said.
CSTC leaders chose to apply for a competitive Citizens' Institute on Rural Design workshop funding, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, because connecting Houston's tourist attractions should boost tourism and benefit neighborhoods, Kemp said. In late July, the CSTC learned Houston was one of only four communities in the nation to receive the award, which will enable CSTC to host a rural design technical workshop this fall for the town.
"We and our partners in Houston recognize that this area has wonderful potential; we also recognize that this CIRD program will provide the necessary expertise that Houston needs," she said.
The CIRD funding will fund a two-and-a-half day workshop in Houston, with CIRD providing design expertise and technical assistance valued at $35,000, according to CIRD officials. The CSTC-Houston team will receive additional training, both before and after the workshop, through conference calls, webinars and other web-based resources. Topics include community engagement, rural design, partnership development and workshop planning.
CIRD is a National Endowment for the Arts initiative that collaborates with the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Project for Public Spaces, Inc.; the Orton Family Foundation; and the CommunityMatters Partnership to sponsor design experts' work in rural communities.
To qualify for the CIRD funding, towns must have populations fewer than 50,000; only two towns and two counties were selected. The Mississippi community is the only one in the Southeast, and it's the smallest--only 3,562 residents. Other funding recipients are located in Franklin, New Hampshire; Oregon County, Missouri; and Lancaster County, Nebraska.
"The selected communities demonstrate rich potential for leveraging partnerships to take action on a wide range of rural design issues," said Cynthia Nikitin, CIRD program director and senior vice president of project for Public Spaces, Inc. "Rural design is a valuable tool for citizens to use to build on existing assets and improve their community's quality of life and long-term viability.
"The workshop will provide national experts in design-related fields that can help develop a tangible vision for how to connect the trail to the downtown, as well as provide a way that Houston can bring economic development to its town by capitalizing on the trail."
For more information about the CSTC, visit carlsmalltowncenter.org.
Learn more about CIRD at www.rural-design.org.
MSU is online at www.msstate.edu.