Wilton organizers hoping to draw people to downtown

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Michael Cleveland photo This sign on Route 101 in Milford reminds drivers to turn right to get to downtown Wilton and its shops, movie and restaurant. A second sign is planned for Route 101 further west. It will remind drivers to turn left.

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WILTON – Businesses here have been challenged during the recession, but things seem to be getting better, two leaders of the Wilton Main Street Association said last week.

“It started to get a bit better toward the end of last year,” said Pat Condon, the Main Street Association’s program director.

A continuing problem, though, is the continuing difficulty for startup businesses to get loans, said Richard Sharkey, president of the association’s board of directors.

“It’s very tight, no matter what the government is saying,” Sharkey said in an interview at the association’s office last week. “The funding is just not available. Banks just are not loaning money unless you’ve got assets. If you have a house and you don’t owe any money on it, they’ll loan you money.”

Grants also can be an issue.

“I run into a lot of people who want to start a business and are looking for a grant,” Sharkey said, “but grants are just not available unless you want to start a very specific business – environmentally related, or something the government wants, or if you’re a large corporation and you’re going to do research in a specific field.”

Something of a problem for Wilton is that the downtown area is easily bypassed by people going, say, from Milford to Peterborough. They drive on Route 101 and might never hit the town’s Main Street. That’s true even of some people who live in the town, Sharkey said.

“They don’t work (in an area) where they have to drive through Wilton downtown,” he said. “They have very little idea of what actually exists in downtown Wilton. We found that after the landslide (on Route 101 from one of the floods of a few years ago) that that’s when people really started to know Wilton, because they were forced to drive through it.”

He and Condon pointed especially to the Town Hall Theatre, which shows recent and older movies, and to the Riverview Mill, home to a bevy of local artists and artisans, and they hope they can convince more residents to check out those places, among others.

Condon referenced a meeting of the state’s Main Street Program at which the need to attract more residents to their own downtowns was discussed.

“If every homeowner in your community spends 10 percent of their disposable income in your community, it would make a massive difference,” she said.

The association is being active in promoting the downtown, both said. Last year, for instance, it launched a golf tournament.

“Even though it wasn’t held on Main Street, obviously, it was very successful” Condon said. “The Wilton Main Street Cafe did the lunch outdoors, so that was helpful for them, and it brought a different group of people into town that don’t necessarily come down Main Street a lot. It was a gorgeous day, so they walked around the park. It was one of our biggest fundraisers.”

The association put on three concerts last year and is aiming for five this year in the Main Street park next to Nelson’s Candies.

“We kept getting increasing numbers of people,” Sharkey said.

At the first concert, attended by about 50 people, he had remarked that he would hope for 200 the following year, but “at the third concert, we had 300” that first year.

It also allowed local businesses to get involved: Nelson’s sold ice cream, the cafe sold hamburgers.

The park is a drawing card, too, they agreed.

“People are really liking it,” Condon said.

The association plans to continually improve the park, this year by cleaning up the area behind it to open the view of the river and the old railroad trestle.

“It’s a picturesque place,” Sharkey said.

Both are optimistic about the future of downtown.

“In the long run, it’s going to keep improving,” Sharkey said. “I think we’re going to wind up living differently – not burning up gas going to far places. What I hope is we get to a more community atmosphere and end up doing things together or having (the downtown) as a meeting place. I just have a feeling that things have to change.”

They can’t do it alone, though, Condon said, pointing to the importance of volunteers.

“I can’t tell you the number of volunteers that have assisted me the past few years,” she said. “It warms my heart.”