“We may not be able to have a tree lighting party, but we will have lights, lights, lights. Not even 2020 and the Grinch can stop us."
“Our downtown here in Corinth is doing pretty well in 2020 considering how difficult this year has been. When everything was first shut down, a lot of the owners of the downtown buildings decided to not collect rent for a couple of months. They understood how important that would be to the tenants. And as members of our community, as neighbors, they wanted to make sure to help our downtown businesses as much as possible. It makes a huge difference when the owners of the buildings are members of your town and personally know the owners of the businesses they are renting to.
People in the community also are coming downtown more, making a point to shop at stores and pick up meals at the restaurants. We painted a huge new “Welcome to Historic Corinth” mural downtown for everyone to see and that’s created a lot of interest, including tons of photos and social media posts. We were hoping the mural would lift everyone’s spirits and it looks like it worked!
We also did a “We’re All in this Together” video featuring our high school students, town officials, and businesses. It rallied the community, keeping us all connected even when things can’t be like they were. That video was a huge success -- it’s been viewed almost 46,000 times! You should watch it here.
Christmas is right around the corner, and Christmas in downtown Corinth is always huge. I don’t know if we’ll be able to have the parade and the tree-lighting party this year, but we will have Christmas lights. Lots of them. Two years ago, I teamed up with Angela from Main Street Corinth and Tammi, who loves projects like this, and we decided to put up lights on the rooftops of our downtown buildings. At first, we met with a lot of negative comments of how we couldn’t accomplish this, so Angela went on YouTube and figured out how to do it. We bought the stuff, got permission from the building owners to get on top of the buildings, and started stringing the lights. When we got to a building where we needed some extra help navigating, we called the mayor for help. He had the fire department come help us with the buildings that couldn’t be accessed from inside. Hanging the lights has created such a buzz in town for the last couple of years. We probably could have filmed a great reality show because something funny happened to us every day that we were working on the lights. Now we have 9,000 lights on top of the buildings. It looks so good you can see it from Highway 72.
Since 2020 has been, well, 2020, we decided we needed to do something extra for downtown this year. So Tammi, Emily, Angela and I have been getting up on top of those buildings again and we’re running 4,000 more lights. So there will be 13,000 total! We may not be able to have a tree lighting party, but we will have lights, lights, lights for all those shoppers and restaurant-hoppers as they go about their holiday celebrations. Not even 2020 and the Grinch can stop us.” -- Christy, Visit Corinth #Mississippi
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