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Department of Housing and Community Development

Main Attractions: Salisbury’s Revitalization Sets the Stage for National Folk Festival

Maryland’s Eastern Shore is a vast expanse of farmland surrounded by water. Its largest city, Salisbury, sits at the beginning of the Wicomico River. Known as the “capital of the Eastern Shore,” this Main Street Maryland community takes the best of the shore’s rural living and combines it with a vibrant downtown that is currently undergoing a renaissance of its own, evident in its status as the new home of the National Folk Festival.

As the city undergoes a physical revitalization, which includes upgrades to infrastructure and facade improvements, Laura Soper, the city’s Director of Business Development, credits its recognition as a Main Street Maryland community in 2001 with helping to revive a faltering small business community downtown. Receiving that designation, Soper said, “really brought the focus back to our small businesses.” The Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development has invested in some of these successes, including $50,000 in Community Legacy funds for FY17 that brought interior and exterior improvements for commercial buildings located in the city’s Downtown Historic District. The city also received $100,000 from the same program in FY18 for the installation of new streetlights.

One of the largest indicators of Salisbury’s success is its selection as the home of the National Folk Festival, which the city will host from 2018 to 2020. The National Folk Festival travels to a new city every three years, and Salisbury was selected out of 30 cities that applied in April 2017. The free festival is expected to attract as many as 150,000 people during its three-day run from September 7-9, 2018, and will also generate up to $30 million a year for the local economy.To make it successful, the city has been working with neighboring towns and counties to ensure adequate accommodations for visitors. A new outdoor stage, the Riverwalk Amphitheater, was also constructed to serve as one of the main stages for the festival; the amphitheater is complemented by a newly-installed fountain in the Wicomico River. “The economic impact is huge,” Soper said. “It’s going to ripple all across the region, and it’s really going to put Salisbury on the map.”

Soper considers the city’s defining charm for visitors to be its blend of the best of rural and city living, a sentiment that many other Salisbury residents and business owners share, as well as a large part of what attracted the organizers of the National Folk Festival to the city. The city is rich with parks and other “hidden gems,” Soper said, and it’s just as easy to find serenity in solitude as it is to find a bustling crowd of people enjoying a festival or a night on the town. “It’s still got that hometown feeling, but there’s also that urban sense driving the downtown revitalization,” Soper said. Salisbury’s other biggest asset is her personal favorite, the friendliness of its people. “We have an extremely generous and caring community, and that’s what always sticks out to me. There’s always people there to help someone in need. …Salisbury is very proactive. They’re caring, they’re helping, and so really, it’s the people.”

“Main Attractions” is a regular series highlighting Main Street Maryland communities. Main Street Maryland is a comprehensive downtown revitalization program created in 1998 by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. These communities receive assistance for improving the economy, appearance and image of their traditional downtown business districts. For more information on Main Street Maryland, visit http://dhcd.maryland.gov/Communities/Pages/programs/MainStreet.aspx