Business View Civil Municipal June 2023

127 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 6 NEENAH, WISCONSIN investments in Downtown Neenah; attract new investment to the District; promote the orderly development and physical maintenance of the District, including implementation of the downtown element of Neenah’s 2040 Comprehensive Plan; and to develop, redevelop, maintain, operate, and promote the District efficiently and effectively. “Downtown Neenah is the historic district. We maintain the central city; we recruit and retain the businesses; we do PR marketing for the central city; we take care to make sure the district is attractive,” Hanneman reports. “Downtowns are the heart of any community. One of the things we are blessed to have in our community is local ownership. Sometimes, you have absentee landlords who may not have that vested interest in the community. One hundred percent of our property owners in the central city district live, work, play, and maintain that connection to our community. That is a really big deal for a small downtown like Neenah. If you’re recruiting new people to come to the community, they want to go through the downtown to get a feel of what the community’s priorities are. If we can give people that feeling, then we’ve got them locked in.” “We recently completed our downtown master plan that we refer to as Neenah Next,” says Schmidt. “Downtown is so important; it’s a vibrant downtown; it’s seen a lot of growth and transformation over the last several decades and we want to see that continue. The purpose of the plan is to see a future by design and not default. By planning, we can look at how to put the pieces of the puzzle together, continue the vibrancy, protect the historic nature of downtown, increase walkability, and create this regional jewel that attracts businesses, employees, and ultimately people who want to live in this community.”