Economic Strategist to Present Findings on Downtown Canby Visioning This Week

After several months of studying our downtown and talking with Canby residents and business owners, Michele Reeves of Civilis Consultants will return next week to share her report and recommendations. The presentation will focus on how to improve economic performance in downtown Canby.

Michele Reeves is an economic strategist with significant experience revitalizing districts. She is the founder and principal of Civilis Consultants, with more than 18 years of experience in downtown districts all over the country and a strong private sector background in commercial real estate.

She was contracted by Canby’s economic development office in May. Her role involved hosting a Civic Identity Workshop for local business owners (which happened last month), conducting a community survey and delivering an overall framework for downtown development.

In her presentation this week, she will share how Canby collectively defined its story, and what residents identified as the experience they would like downtown to offer in the future.

She will be break­ing down the components of Canby’s Civic Identity. This will also include ideas for metamorphosis in the form of toolkits for prop­erty owners, business owners, the public sector and non-profit agencies.

Reeves has a particular passion for helping small and independent business owners succeed. She will demonstrate many local opportunities for im­proving sales, with a particular focus on ideas that are easy to ­implement, right away, for smaller sums of money.

The presentation will take place next Wednesday Sept 25 at at 6 p.m. in the Anto­nia Ballroom, above the Backstop Bar & Grill. But if you want a sneak peek, check out our interview with Michele on “Episode 103: You’re Going Down…Town.”

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