In 2022, the state established the Kentucky Product Development Initiative, or CP I for short.

It's a dollar for dollar match program that helps communities develop land for economic growth projects.

Rowan County, home to the city of Moorhead, is using the program to establish what's called Build ready sites which attract businesses to the area.

How Moorhead is Working to Become a Better City.

That story is today's Monday's on Main segment.

The downtown is a heart of the community, the heart of the county.

So the health of your downtown has a direct impact on everything else that goes on in your county and region.

44% of our current workforce lay their head down at night somewhere outside of Rowan County.

So what that means is 44% of people that are working here that are paying taxes here, obtaining wages here from gainful employment are taking that and going somewhere else.

We have to do more on that forefront to be able to attract retail and to be able to attract those hospitality places.

And once you start doing those pieces, then we have to go after housing.

And I feel like if we get the livability piece correct, then we will be able to attract more of those larger industries looking at us, because we will be increasing our workforce numbers and we will be offering more things for those future employees from future companies that invest here to be able to have more opportunities for recreation, shopping, entertainment, food options.

So those are our objectives in the next five years.

So a build ready site, what's that do for us?

So when we did this particular site, we created a 150,000 square foot flat surface.

And basically what that does is we pull infrastructure to that site for water, sewer, gas, telecom and so forth.

And so it speeds up one, the construction process, but two, it cuts the cost down.

We've we've helped them to be able to save money.

We've made it more attractive.

They don't have to spend the money on doing the geotechnical.

We just had to present them the reports from everything that we did, and they just have to build.

We would like to have our town be such in such a way that it inspired them to want to live here.

Your town should be one that the people that live here enjoy doing things in town.

If our own people enjoy doing things in town, more likely people that are not living here will want to live here.

We often talk to our to our staff about how we're not in the book business and we're not in the coffee business.

We're in the people business.

And so, you know, that's that's always been central to what we do, trying to support our community, to reflect our community, to be an open place for people to come together, as well as a retail space, obviously.

But and we hope that this will be a place that will draw more businesses downtown.

Up until the last couple, three months, we had no vacancies in downtown.

We had one or two that were being renovated.

Right now we've got probably five vacancies, but we look, there's opportunity for something new.

We have the boutiques for two nice new boutiques that have taken in spaces.

We've got a new brewery here in town and it was recruited, developed for three young fellows.

The three Amigos, they call themselves that to develop Charlestown Brewing Company.

And that was the re rehab of an old building that had been slated to be torn down between 75 East Main Street.

So our downtown is pretty solid.

We want people to come and for it to be, you know, an experience all downtown where they can see their friends here and they go across to the soda found that Holbrook drugs.

I mean there's so many there's so many things to to do down here.

We hope that coming downtown becomes part of their part of their routine and part of what they do.

You know, downtowns are the absolute heartbeat of all communities and downtown revitalization is important to that synergy.

Looking forward ten, 15 and 20 years in the short, but looking 50 years forward as well.

The Moorhead Rowan County Chamber of Commerce has plans to develop more build ready sites soon.