Healthy Main Streets
Storefront Improvement Program Mission Hill Main Streets Calendar
Elder Friendly Business District
Healthy Main Streets
Boston Main Streets implemented Healthy Main Streets in several Main Streets districts during the summer of 2008 as a means to promote health and wealthness in our neighborhoods. The initiative continues throughout several neighborhoods throught the year.
Storefront Improvement Program
The Facade Improvement Program (also known as the Storefront Improvement Program) is often one of the most visible program of any Main Street district. Mission Hill Main Streets has provided design assistance to more than thirty businesses and matching grants for the construction of eleven completed facade improvements.
Mission Hill Main Streets has assisted over 25 businesses since the inception of the Storefront Improvement Program in early 2000. This year we have helped long time business owner Martin Zayas of Martin's Beeper redo his signage. Cut It Up, another long time business owned by Robert Bonner, and property owner Mission Hill Properties were awarded a grant for architectural design of his new storefront.
The Mission Hill Main Streets Calendar
Since 1999, Mission Hill Main Streets has published a yearly calendar. Initially, the calendar featured historic photgraphs, but for the past several years the calendar has served as a promotional tool for the twelve businesses that sponsor the calendar as well as for the neighborhood overall. The calendar has been designed as a standard size wall calendar, a desk calendar, and a small wall calendar. Design work has been provided by volunteers as well as by Mass Art work study students and Wentworth Interns.
Elder-Friendly Business District
Mission Hill Main Streets, the City of Boston's Commission on Affairs of the Elderly, and the Boston Partnership for Older Adults are collaborated on a pilot project to develop an Elder Friendly Business District. (click here for more information).The Elder Friendly Business District has now been implemented in 4 other neighbhoords (Fields Corner, Hyde Park, West Roxbury, and Roslindale Village).
The steering committee is composed of seniors living in the neighborhood, representatives of organizations that both serve and advocate on behalf of the older population, interested institutions, and representatives of city agencies and elected officials. This committee is prioritizing and addressing issues of concern to our older residents. We have discovered that many of those issues - for example, the conditions of sidewalks ad crosswalks - are of importance to the neighborhood as a whole. Both wheelchairs and baby carriages benefit from smooth sidewalks and ramped curbing at corners!