"Less than a decade ago, Water Valley, Mississippi was a forgotten small town: there were 18 empty storefronts lining its four-block Main Street and plenty of decaying homes for sale. Located only twenty miles from the University of Mississippi and the pricey town of Oxford (also former home to William Faulkner), it was well-placed for revival.
In 2002, Mickey Howley and his wife Ole Miss professor Annette Trefzer bought an $80,000 century-old home and one of those empty storefronts for $60,000. They were early pioneers in the effort to rehabilitate the old 19th Century railroad town- turning their former drugstore into the Bozarts art gallery, but it took the formation of a community to create real change.
“In the last seven years,” explained Howley- now director of the Water Valley Main Street Association - in 2015 to a White House meeting on rural placemaking, “and remember Water Valley is 3,500 people with a four-block long downtown, this team has been instrumental in bringing 88 new jobs to downtown. Adding 26 new businesses. Fixing buildings and I don’t just mean façade jobs, but major renovations in 29 buildings. Adding 14 upper floor apartments. In that new business mix, we’ve added four new restaurants, three art galleries, one grocery store, one doctor’s office, and one brewery.”
Howley calls it “reimagining” structures: a foundry is now a brewery, a service station is now a restaurant, a drugstore is now an art gallery and a department store is now a grocery store/school."
