Ashland has seen its share of woes: its AK Steel plant has lost hundreds of jobs over the last few years, while other manufacturers have shuttered their doors. The largely Appalachian, blue collar town also has more than 18 percent of its populace living below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census.
Despite its troubles, the streets of its downtown paint the picture of a city on the rise. Just walk a block down from the Pendleton Art Center, or PAC, on Winchester Avenue to 16th Street. There you’ll find several interior decorator shops, a janitorial store, a secondhand jewelry store, specialty shops and a children’s clothing boutique.
The block is full of business: a contrast to Middletown’s Central Avenue where empty stores and pawn shops dominate.
But the people of Ashland will tell you their downtown was much different a year ago.
Five years of PAC events intermingled with annual city celebrations have finally caught on, sending a clear message that downtown is where you need to do business. And that’s what Diane Blair, a resident and downtown worker said finally filled the shops.
Greg Winters, a partner at Gary Allen Designs LLC., said the interior decorating shop opened just a little more than a month ago on the corner of Winchester Avenue and 16th Street. One of the draws was the Pendleton Art Center.
“We liked all the artist stuff down here and we liked the building and location,” Winters said. “Inside the shop we sell some of the artists’ items at consignment, so it’s beneficial for all of us.”
While Winters said the PAC isn’t the only driver that keeps him in business, the traffic it brings by his shop helps.
“If Middletown is getting one, then they are going to like it,” he said.
With plans to open a Middletown PAC on the corner of Broad Street and Central Avenue in the center of downtown, Ashland could serve as a portrait for what could happen here: a city resurrected.
“I would tell Middletown: if you wait for all the lights to turn green before you go, you’ll never go,” said Danny Craig, director of Ashland Main Street. “Sometimes risks don’t pay off, but in the case of the Pendleton, it did.”
Pendleton a slow-growing, major part of downtown Ashland
It may not have been its salvation, but there is no doubt by residents in the city of Ashland, Ky. that the Pendleton Art Center has given the area a leg-up.
The former Armco town with a median income of $30,000, according to the U.S. Census, was certainly not a “no-brainer” for an art center, said Danny Craig, director of Ashland Main Street, a downtown event and business organization.
The first signs of success took two years after officials from the small city just on the other side of the Ohio River asked founder Jim Verdin to consider opening a location in Ashland. Before the PAC, Craig said “junk stores” and secondhand shops dominated the main drags of Ashland.
“For downtown, it wasn’t what you wanted to be driving the economic development,” Craig said. “But with the Pendleton, all of a sudden we went from having three to four artists downtown to having 40 downtown. We’re a designated arts district, and all of a sudden, it makes you this arts destination which you can promote.”
Middletown city officials have offered $450,000 in grants and loans to Verdin to open the city’s own Pendleton Art Center on the corner of Broad Street and Central Avenue downtown.
Amid a mix of support and skepticism, the hope is the arts center will be an economic driver, spurring new development and providing an arts flavor to the city’s center.
In Ashland, residents, businesses and city officials said that is just what happened when they opened their own center in their blue-collar town.
Blue collars and art
Adding an arts center into a town of 22,000 that didn’t have much going for it “other than a hospital” and a stop on the Country Concert Music Tour was a risk, Verdin told Middletown’s City Council after before it voted to support the PAC.
“Middletown has a lot more assets, with its housing stock and its situation between Dayton and Cincinnati,” he said.
But what Ashland has now, said former mayor Steve Gilmore, is Pendleton.
Gilmore, who was mayor of Ashland from 2002-2008 and is now the local school superintendent, said despite the recession Pendleton has seemed to bring stability to downtown.
“We are small-town America, and when you travel as I do looking at these little communities, a lot have dried up and blown away over the years,” he said. “I think the Pendleton center is alive and is helping us make it through.”
At least 10 new businesses have opened or relocated to downtown Ashland in the five years since Pendleton opened. While some of the businesses are not directly related to the arts center, Craig said that without the PAC it “would be a harder sell to get people to move downtown.”
Tom Kelley, who has been mayor of Ashland for two years, said residents have embraced the art center and the new opportunities for entertainment and shopping it offers. While there is still a smattering of empty storefronts, he said the PAC represents “a large footprint in our downtown” that adds vibrancy to the area.
“Based on everything I thought it would be, it is everything I expected it to be,” he said.
New growth
The building that houses the Pendleton is relic of its downtown heydays when people would drive in to shop at the former G.C. Murphy’s department store — one of many that used to grace the area until businesses began pulling out in the 1970s. Downtown Ashland resident Diane Blair said she can remember a time where if you could find a parking space in the center of town on a Saturday afternoon “you would feed the meter all day rather than give up that spot.”
But like many other industrial towns, a loss of jobs and lack of people wanting to shop downtown has taken its toll on Ashland.
Blair said once her entire family — husband, brother, uncles — worked at the Armco plant, now AK Steel. As employee levels dropped to about 1,000, Blair said her own household along with other residents have been forced to find new employment opportunities.
But within the past five years since the PAC moved in, Blair said she has seen more businesses move in — an entire block on 16th Street was vacant just the year before and is now booming with business.
“The art center is definitely helping, not hurting downtown,” she said. “There has been a lot of action since they opened, but it’s been a slow progression.”
Kathy Keelin, a lifetime resident of Ashland, said she believes the PAC has given downtown a new identity.
As owner of The Olive Branch cafe inside the Pendleton, Keelin said she used to have a location a few blocks away; however, as the PAC began to catch on in the community she decided she wanted to be closer to the action.
“I think the Pendleton Art Center brings a lot of business downtown,” she said. “The business people just love the atmosphere in here and they love to stop in for lunch and see what is going on.”
Sprawled among the mishmash of iron and wooden tables in the cafe were hospital employees in scrubs, mothers with their children and a few professionals from a nearby office. Sandra Jenkins, who was there with her children, said the PAC gives more options to people when they are downtown.
“I like their events. I like to see what is going on,” she said.
Building over time
If Middletonians can learn anything about what the PAC could do, city officials said it would be that it’s a great addition, but requires patience and time to get off the ground.
Craig said when the PAC first opened crowds were small, consisting of about 300-400 people at the First Friday event when the art center opens its doors to the public for sales and an artists meet-and-greet.
“You could shoot a cannon and not hit anybody,” he said. “If we had 250 click through the door we were celebrating.
“But even then, we were making money,” Craig added.
Within three years, those crowds grew to 900 people coming into the Pendleton alone. The addition of live bands and car shows and the closing of several downtown streets has led to an explosion of up to 4,000 people downtown.
There is no parking garage or lots for residents during this event. It’s an issue Craig said the city has never been concerned with.
“If you give people a good enough reason, they will come, they will find a place to park,” he said. “And it’s all about marketing. It doesn’t matter how good you are unless you show people what you’ve got.”
Craig said he now calls the event Downtown Live “because that is when it is all lit up, open and full of life.”
Jessie Zacur, a manager at the nearby C.J. Maggie’s restaurant down the street from the Pendleton, said business can be slow some days, especially with fewer people to opting for a burger and fries out on the town because of the economy. But in the almost five years she has been with the restaurant, she has seen the growth of the PAC nearby bring more business through her doors, especially when they host open houses.
“We always get a lot of business from it. It’s packed in here,” she said. “I think it just gives people something else to do downtown besides shopping.”
Gilmore said he thinks the recession stunted some of the PAC’s growth, as only about 30 artists have moved into the center and the PAC’s second floor is still waiting to be developed. Also, he was hoping for more real estate to be developed as a result of artists and people from the community wanting to live downtown near the Pendleton.
“You can do a balance sheet and there are some good things that have come from it and there are some other things we are still waiting for,” Gilmore said. “But there is a pride from our people that the PAC is here and it gave us another facet to our identity.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2843 or jheffner@coxohio.com.
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