While Marylanders are still becoming familiar with their communities’ Main Street program throughout the state, on the Mid-Shore, that’s not an issue. Over the last twenty years, our largest towns, including Cambridge, Chestertown, Denton, Easton, and Centreville, have all participated in the state’s Main Street program, and each one can point to tangible success stories as a result.
Maryland’s Main Street program is helping small towns across the state rediscover the power of their historic downtowns. Rooted in a national model from Main Street America, the initiative supports communities that want to revitalize their commercial cores while preserving local character, focusing on four key areas—design, promotion, economic vitality, and organization—to create a framework that’s as much about people as it is about place.
Starting next week, Main Street Maryland will take the stage in downtown Easton at the Avalon Theatre for a series of workshops, presentations, and to highlight our regional success for representatives from New Cumberland to Ocean City, and the Spy was curious to talk with Christine McPherson, who leads the Main Street effort in Maryland, to understand better how some of the State’s small towns are making real progress.
This video is approximately six minutes in length. For more information about Main Street Maryland, please go here.
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Easton is successful, but not all of Talbot County. Our villages have been left behind. Exclusionary zoning has quietly redlined most areas, leaving communities economically stagnant and full of vacant lots. Jobs, small businesses, and skilled trades that once sustained these places have been zoned out of existence.
This is not only about land use, it is about fairness. Seniors, young families, and the disabled should not have to drive miles for a meal, a mechanic, or a pharmacy. Artificial barriers have made entire communities unwelcoming and cut off from basic necessities. When conservation zoning is used to exclude people and everyday economic life, it becomes discrimination: the same kind of exclusion that once shaped segregation across America.
Maryland’s Main Streets thrive because they receive investment, attention, and creativity. Our villages deserve the same. It is time for zoning that supports mixed use, walkable communities and restores opportunity, civic life, and local enterprise. Talbot should belong to everyone, not only to a few large estate owners who can afford to bring help from elsewhere.