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Deana Wright, Manager
270-759-9474
101 South 4th St.
(Union Planters Bank building downtown, 3rd floor)
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"Murray Main Street  exists to strengthen the downtown as the center of our community through concentrated efforts in organization, promotion, design and economic restructuring.  We seek to encourage cooperation and build leadership in the Murray community, stimulate downtown revitalization and historic development, and create a positive image for Murray by promoting the downtown as an exciting place to invest and own a business."

Why is Main Street everyone’s concern? Calloway County has a rich history dating back a long time. Our town was built on the agriculture of the county. This industry shaped our community. Our downtown served everyone. It was the place where you traded your livestock or goods, bought groceries, saw the doctor, boarded a bus, sold your tobacco crop, got your prescription filled, saw a movie, and the list goes on and on. Our heritage is crucial to who we are today. It’s a mirror. It tells us who we are, how we got here, and where we want to go. Its prosperity and forward thinking enabled Murray to grow to where it is today. Our heritage deserves to be remembered and preserved. Our downtown reflects our rich past. It tells the outside world what type of community we are. We must cherish and preserve our past, our heritage, and our court square because there is no other like it.    

Murray Main Street  is a huge project that takes hold in small ways. By engaging the memories of what once was we can imagine our future and begin to see it re-emerge…one person, one idea, and one memory at a time. We are not in competition with malls, builders and big box stores. That’s not what Main Street is about. Main Street is about a sense of place. The dream for our downtown is simple yet complex. We want townspeople to sit on the square and eat their lunch together. We want kids to get cones at their favorite ice cream parlor. We want trees to cool us in the summer. We want buildings and businesses that beckon us to enter. We want visitors to be so enchanted that they return again and again. We want devoted downtown dwellers who can find the goods and services that they need just a short walk from their homes. We want downtown to be the place to come to and find that most special something. We want downtown to have grace, dignity and charm. We want downtown to be the thriving busy pulse of Murray. We want downtown to remind us of why we choose to live and stay in Murray. We want downtown to anchor our sense of place and inspire the community to make dreams happen.  

Murray Main Street wishes to preserve that past so future generations know that there was such a thing as individual stores and that everything isn’t “supersize”. Our mission is simple, to revitalize and renew downtown. Our vision is grand to have a thriving central business district, with retail stores, downtown dwellers, and activity that moves from day into evening into night. The mechanics however, of revitalizing downtown are not so simple. In fact they are complex. It takes time, education, patience, money, expertise, manpower, cooperation, luck and another cup of this and another pinch of that to make it happen.  Murray Main Street is a preservation-based economic development organization working cooperatively within our community and with local, state and federal government to bring the resources and expertise to bear that we need to help ourselves revitalize downtown.  

Murray Main Street has been sanctioned as a National Main Street community. We are part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Main Street Center. We join thousands of cities and towns both large and small who are using the “Main Street” “four point” approach to revitalization. With the exception of the manager, everyone at Murray Main Street is a volunteer. The “four point” approach focuses on historic preservation, economic development, promotional activities, and using community volunteers to organize and implement all projects and activities. We work closely with the Kentucky Heritage Council who help support and guide our activities. The Main Street approach is being used with great success to breathe life back into downtown communities all across America. That’s what Main Street is all about!

Come join with us in making our community all it can and should be! The best of the old, the best of the new, the best that is yet to come!