Who funds it
Mississippi Power funds the program. The pool runs about $25,000.
Downtown Columbia in the 1950s, when both sides of Main parked solid. Courtesy of the Marion County Historical Society.
Main Street Columbia · Designated community since 1991
Downtown is somebody's whole job.
Most towns hope downtown works out. Columbia gave it a program, a plan, and thirty-five years of receipts.
What a Main Street program adds up to
172
New businesses opened downtown
518
New jobs created
$14M
Private dollars invested downtown
9,345
Volunteer hours given
The Four Points
Four jobs, one downtown.
Main Street America organizes downtown work around four points, and Columbia's program runs all four:
- Economic Vitality — filling empty buildings, supporting the businesses already in them, and putting investment where it compounds.
- Design — the physical street: storefronts, signs, sidewalks, lighting, and the historic fabric underneath all of it.
- Promotion — giving people a reason to come downtown, and a reason to come back.
- Organization — the volunteers, the partners, and the money that keep the other three running.
Columbia has been a designated Mississippi Main Street community since 1991. It moved from Affiliate status in 2024 to a nationally Accredited Main Street America community in 2026 — the program's top tier.
Beyond the numbers above, the program also counts 26 business expansions and $1,865,736 in public dollars invested downtown.
North Main North Main
Pipes and concrete first. Ribbon later.
The North Main project — new drainage, sidewalks and lighting — was completed in January 2026. Five months later it won the Mississippi Main Street Association's Outstanding Public Improvement Project, Small Community.
The final phase cost $678,000: $500,000 from the state and $178,000 from the city. It is the kind of work nobody photographs and everybody walks on.
Facade & Sign Grants
Up to $5,000 toward your storefront.
Main Street Columbia runs a matching grant program for downtown facades and signs. The Marion County Development Partnership can point you to the current application.
How much
Matching grants from $500 to $5,000 — you put in your half, the grant puts in the other.
What it covers
Storefront facade work and signage in the downtown district.
How to ask
Talk to Main Street Columbia before you order the sign, not after.
Downtown, on the calendar
The reasons to be on Main Street.
Freedom Festival — late June, at Bluff Street Park and downtown, with fireworks at 9 p.m.
Columbia Food & Music Festival — September. The fourth annual ran September 13, 2025: twelve food trucks, sixteen acts, three stages.
Downtown Cookie Crawl — storefront to storefront, cookie to cookie.
Fall surprises — like the year a hay-bale maze took over a downtown lot.
One change worth knowing: in December 2025 the city's holiday celebration moved out of downtown. "A Columbia Christmas at City Park" ran December 1–25 at Friendship Park, with a Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, and two large trees.
Both opened within months of each other
Two event venues, both on Main Street.
In February 2025 WDAM ran a story headlined "Main Street Columbia welcomes 2 event venues" — because downtown had just gained two at once. If you are looking for somewhere to hold a party, these are both bookable and both are on Main.
The Klassy Venue
811 Main Street, Suite 25 · (601) 731-0424 · klassykreationsanddesigns.com
Opened August 2024 by Tracy Harvey, who also runs Klassy Kreations and Designs, a decorating business — so the room and the décor come from the same person. Birthday parties, memorials, receptions, weddings, bridal showers, baby showers. Reviews run 100% recommend across 28 of them, which is the sort of number a small venue earns one weekend at a time.
And it is in the old Sears building. A department store that anchored Main Street for generations is now where the town holds its receptions. Harvey told WDAM she wanted "to be able to see the downtown and Columbia grow."
The Marquee at 618
618 Main Street · marquee618.com
Opened by Ben Whatley in a century-old building, and built for evenings: live music, karaoke, trivia nights, comedy — family-friendly, and ticketed through Eventbrite. Whatley also bought and operates the Marion Theater, which he took on in the summer of 2024, so one person is now running two downtown entertainment rooms a few doors apart.
His pitch to WDAM was simple: "What we're excited about is offering that Friday-night, Saturday-night place." That is precisely the thing small downtowns lose first and miss most.
Neither venue is a city facility and the city takes nothing from either — book direct. If you run a venue we have missed, tell us.
Main Street, mid-century Main Street, mid-century
This is what a working downtown looked like.
Look at how much is happening. Both sides parked solid, both sidewalks busy, Zender's on the left and a drug store under an awning on the right, and the whole street shaded by trees somebody planted on purpose.
This is the standard Main Street revitalization is measured against — not nostalgia, a benchmark. Every empty storefront filled since 1991 is a step back toward this photograph, and the 172 new businesses and $14 million in private investment above are how far that has come.
The trees are the detail worth stealing. A shaded sidewalk is the cheapest thing a downtown can do to make people stay longer.
Main Street Columbia
Downtown has its own front door.
Main Street Columbia keeps its own mail — P.O. Box 1342, Columbia, MS 39429. For the quickest route to the program, City Hall will point you to the right person · 601.736.8201. For the full list of who's open downtown, the chamber keeps the directory.