It may not be the true geographic center of Kentucky, but Campbellsville has been called Kentucky Central.

That's because the seat of Taylor County is situated less than 90 minutes away from major cities historical sites, a popular state park that sees a million visitors a year and stops along the bourbon trail.

After losing thousands of jobs in the late 1990, the city found its center by building up the old and inviting in the new.

As you'll see in today's Monday's on Main Street, you know, we like to say that we're everything you like about Kentucky all in one place.

Campbellsville was like many communities that went through a time where the downtowns were dwindling.

We lost a major employer here of 4000 jobs when Fruit of the Loom left in 1998.

That was a major blow to our community.

There's been a lot of comings and goings.

A lot of businesses that didn't survive seemed like a ghost town down here.

There was tumbleweeds blowing down the street.

Even we were told that we needed to move other people by other people in the community.

Downtowns were not a place to go anymore.

We needed to go downtown.

I think the irony of that is that if we if we had moved, we would have been gone years ago.

We would have survived.

We rebounded quickly with the acquisition of Amazon.

The first Amazon distribution center was located in Campbellsville in Kentucky, and from there other industries came, and from that we solved the revitalization of Main Street, come back, the reinvestment of Main Street from property owners and business owners.

The community has been amazing and supported us through the years.

I mean, they come here, they've now Mitchells, you know, 114 years old, they can't go anywhere else.

We've outlived J.C. Penney's dark hair as Gorman's.

All of those businesses have come and gone.

We are blessed with a number of local businesses who have made it to 60 years, 70 years, one over 100 years that have remained in business in downtown Campbellsville for that time period.

So we started in 1910.

It was men's and boys and then we decided on our 100th birthday that we were going to add one rack of ladies, just one rack, and just see how it was.

And it grew and grew and grew.

And we love to help make people's no sounds tacky.

We love to help make people's dreams come true.

And we can do that quite often.

Success.

And then that longevity of that success.

And I think that's why we've been here for over 75 years, since 1948, when other business people walk up and down Main Street and they see a business that's been in Campbellsville for 70 years.

They see that they can survive and they can thrive here as well.

There was definitely a lot of hesitation about opening a business, especially in the post-pandemic world.

I came here to go to college, so I went to college and I thought for sure I would move away.

At that point.

But we decided to stay here, me and my husband.

And so we've put down roots here in Campbellsville, But I just I fell in love with Campbellsville.

We started in a small space over on Court Street.

About two years ago, we had the opportunity to move into this beautiful, wonderful space.

And so we stepped out, making another big decision to go into a place that was almost three times the size of what we were in.

We're always looking for new and unique businesses that are interested in our community and are willing to do the type of things that you need to do in order to to make our community more attractive, fun and Berry is, I like to call it a place that is all things magical, unique things that you wouldn't find in most stores.

Things that would stir up creativity and imagination and things that would be inspiring to individuals.

We decided kind of post-pandemic that there was a need in our area for a place to go to find local artwork and to find local artists.

From our area, though, we have about 50 artists in our store, most of them are from Kentucky, and then we have a few outside of Kentucky and we are a newer business.

We've only been here about a year and a half, but the other businesses have always been very supportive and helpful.

We all try to support each other in that manner.

We all try to shop locally ourselves.

Our community supports our downtown.

They they're appreciative of our downtown.

You know, they recognize what we have.

There are some of our best salesmen because, you know, they spread the word and the word goes out.

And so all of our businesses thrive because the community responds and they have the buy in.

You know, they want to be downtown.

They walk the streets.

They enjoy it.