Welcome!  This is Timothy Triplett, and I started this Blog as a way of communicating between all the people actively engaged in promoting the downtown areas of Palestine, Texas.

Why City Center?  Palestine is a special city, with an unusually large “downtown” area.  In fact, there are three distinct areas (at least) that could be considered a part of the “downtown” area.  They each have their own real name, but that is more of a history lesson.  Right now we know them as Downtown, Old Town and the Court House square areas.  They are all different areas, but with many common attributes and shared interests.  The term City Center was chosen to refer to all these areas as a group.  When the city applied for the Main Street program, a specific map was created to specify this in greater detail.  That map provides a common definition for the official area to be known as City Center.

How did I wind up doing this?  Well, as a Palestine native who grew up here, I remember the City Center areas well and would like to see them brought back to full life so everyone can enjoy them in the future.  As a member of the Palestine Economic Development Corporation board, I was very supportive of a request from the downtown merchants for help promoting the downtown area.  Since I was so interested, the PEDC board decided to make me the chairman of a PEDC committee to investigate what could best be done to build up the downtown areas.  So, viola, here we are!  There are a number of people also actively involved with this effort, some actively on the committee and others actively involved in other ways.

We were well underway towards some concrete steps when Palestine was chosen as a provisional Main Street city.  Knowing that we would soon have a Main Stree director, and with Christmas and Thanksgiving quickly approaching we backed off until after the holidays.  We now have a Main Street director – Neely Plumb – who will be a pivotal person for the City Center area renovation / development / promotion.  You will likely be hearing more from Neely soon.

 Again, thank you for your interest in the Palestine City Center and I look forward to hearing from you!

 Timothy Triplett