As is the case for far too many of our cities and towns, the last several decades have not been kind to the Logan County city of Booneville’s downtown. Businesses left and buildings stood vacant and deteriorating. In 2016 city leaders and concerned citizens, like lifelong resident Edgar Baker, who is now the mayor, decided to put in the work to turn things around and help their community live up to its motto: “A Good Hometown.”
Baker and his brother-in-law formed the Booneville Downtown Beautification Group under the auspices of the Petit Jean Regional Foundation. From there they partnered with the city, the Booneville Rotary Club, First Western Bank and other civic-minded entities and began revitalizing the downtown area by improving landscaping, adding benches, flower boxes and decorative signage, and painting murals. According to Mayor Baker, from 2017 to 2023 the Booneville Downtown Beautification Group completed 25 building improvement projects, including painting buildings and replacing awnings. Downtown property owners joined the effort as well, completing 22 additional projects. Of downtown’s 65 buildings, 47 have seen improvements since the project began.
To anchor the revitalization project, the partners worked together to raise the funds to build a performance stage and park on a 30,000-sqare foot vacant gravel lot. The Broadway Memorial Park was completed in 2023 at a cost of about $225,000. In addition to being an inviting place for residents and visitors to relax, it has hosted the city’s annual October Daze Festival, Christmas in the Park Night, movie nights, concerts and car shows. In April 2024, the park was the gathering place for the city’s Downtown Solar Eclipse Festival.
It’s a testament to what a community can do when you get the right group of people together, Baker said. “I knew we could make progress, and honestly we got way more done than I ever thought we’d get done.”
The success of this grassroots project has helped create a sense of place, he said. “When you build something nice, people are drawn to that. Having a green space in the middle of downtown with an area where you can sit and eat in the shade—and we’ve got three different restaurants down there—brings people downtown and they want to be outside. It brings more traffic downtown.”
