The Jamestown Renaissance Corporation board of directors hired Frank Besse recently to oversee its efforts downtown as Urban Core Director. P-J photo by Cameron Hurst

To say Frank Besse is familiar with the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation would be an understatement.

To say he’s familiar with downtown would be obvious.

Since 2014, he has served as a co-owner with Jeff James and his wife Alex with the Labyrinth Press Company and Brazil Craft Beer and Wine on Fourth Street.

But for two years prior to that, he served as an officer coordinator with the corporation; and, in the years since, the goal and mission of his former occupation never left his mind.

“I’ve never stopped caring about the work of the JRC or the ideas of economic development and urban planning,” said Besse, hired by the corporation recently as its Urban Core Director, a position borne of a reorganization effort by its board of directors.

“It’s great to be back, but at the same time I’ve never left downtown,” Besse told The Post-Journal with a laugh. “I’ve been able to live and/or work downtown for the last 10 years or so.”

Besse’s first introduction to the landscape of downtown Jamestown as an interested citizen, serving on the committee for the city’s Urban Design Plan crafted in 2006. Little did he know 14 years later, he’d be working to employ its goals full time.

“I came across the plan as a regular citizen, but the JRC is set to work on the ideas in that plan,” he said. “It’s kind of cool because when we were at the table to talk about Urban Design Plan 2.0 and downtown and the river, I had some perspective and familiarity with it.”

The corporation began 14 years ago and according to Besse has grown and changed over time.

In reorganizing, the JRC’s board chose to focus on leveraging grant dollars it was receiving into programs to advance downtown as much as possible by reducing its day-to-day staff from five to two — Besse and Mary Maxwell, who serves as Neighborhood Coordinator.

“Our goal is to take those administrative dollars and pouring them into more grants, more programs and trying to leverage relationships with community organizations and also businesses and individuals to revitalize downtown, increase the marketing and events and promote different programming,” Besse explained.

The change comes at a time when every dollar counts as businesses in the downtown footprint figure out how to reopen safely and smartly amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“What the most important thing is right now is getting these dollars that we’re saving on administration out into the community,” Besse said.

“Through this reorganization, it’s going to be my work and the board’s work getting the programs into the community.”

Primarily, that exists in the form of three different grant programs aimed to help business owners downtown respond to the challenges caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The corporation is helping businesses establish e-commerce so that their product can be put online as well as helping them to acquire parklet permits.

“Business owners can file a permit through City Hall to take parking spaces in front of their business with railings and other precautions to put tables there,” Besse said. “Seeing this in pre-COVID, it’s helped other cities adapt. Europe has done this for a long time and it’s a great partnership between JRC and the city to conduct a pilot program to see what would work as to what could be improved over time.”

There’s also urban dining grants to help those restaurants be able to accommodate folks eating outside.

“We ask businesses if they have room in front of their storefront for tables, chairs or umbrellas,” Besse said. “We’ve always talked about accommodating businesses to allow folks to eat outside and some places in the downtown core are better or worse from it. But, we wanted to make sure grant dollars are available for that.”

Still, Besse can’t help but think about the momentum the city had prior to the pandemic. It’s something he wants to help it recapture.

“We are eager to get back to the energy that downtown was experiencing before,” he said. “There was a momentum and I felt that as a business owner, around the National Comedy Center, the Northwest Arena and it was all around hitting this critical mass of restaurants and more retail opening that downtown was becoming a destination whether it be local residents or tourists saw what was happening downtown and said, ‘lets go to Jamestown.'”

He also noticed that momentum in another area — among his friends and neighbors.

“When you’re able to change the conversation from, ‘Let’s go downtown to go to Forte for dinner’ to ‘Let’s go downtown and we’ll find something to do,’ that’s a turning point,” Besse said. “When you have that many amenities for folks, that’s a turning point and we want to get back to that as soon as we can once things come to pass.”

And while post-COVID is not in the near future, Besse still can’t help but dream big about the future.

“Long term, we want to invest in businesses and buildings,” he said. “The new thing is empowering new organizations and the groups of power around events. We want to see what more we can do to encourage folks to utilize the amazing venues downtown. We’ve seen great things happen with block parties and a sense of vibrancy and fun. Instead of us playing an active role as the organizer, we want to empower other folks to take on that role and help bring a lot more interesting events downtown. That’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m excited about that.”