When you get named the "nicest place in America," other towns take notice.
When Columbiana reached that accomplishment six years ago, city leaders never would have guessed that other communities, from all over the world, in fact, would approach them to ask just how they did it.
Well, that's exactly what's happened and Columbiana is more than happy to tell their secret to success.

It was 2019 when Reader's Digest named Columbiana the "nicest place in America."
If you ask city leaders how they did it, they'll tell you they got started by listening to their businesses.

They began by creating a DORA and held block parties downtown.
And they wanted their main street area to look and sound inviting.

"When you come downtown you're going to hear the music and see the lights and engage your senses," said Columbiana city manager, Lance Willard.

Then there was Youth engagement. Getting young people involved in downtown projects like murals and green spaces gets them invested in their community.

"We've been learning with the entrepreneur class out at the high school. They come down and we give them a project downtown, kind of a blank slate if you will, what would you do in this area so you would take pride in it and maybe bring your families back to this area?" added Willard.

One of the biggest challenges for any main street in Ohio are the vacant store fronts they many have. When they started the process in Columbiana back in 2019 they had 9.  A few years later, they were all filled.

The city convinced landlords to create Pop up spots in their empty store fronts. Free rent and utilities were offered to small businesses where they could test the market to see if brick and mortar works for their business. For many it did.

"Give them a 10x15 spot all the way down. We had 20 people that were interested in doing that. They brought the businesses in from online or out of their homes and they came here," said Willard.

A month later, property owners had paying tenants and Columbiana had filled storefronts.

And since the Readers Digest designation, local towns have contacted Columbiana for help resurrecting their main streets. Lance Williard has spoken to dozens of communities so far and has even done zoom calls with with 45 mayors from the European nation of Moldova.
Girard's mayor came on our noon newscast to boast about it a couple weeks ago.

"He took 2 hours and went through his power point presentation with me. He said what I need to do is start with a focus group. So that's what I did I put together a group of business people. A representative from the school. It went over really well. I've already got feed back. I've got 2 people looking at empty buildings downtown right now," said Girard mayor Mark Zuppo.

Now Columbiana has joined 7 local communities with walkable downtowns to offer storefronts to people looking to start a business.

"When we're helping other communities we're learning just as much as they're learning. We're all about the same communities and we all have the same problems and maybe they have a solution we can learn from too!" said Willard.