The city of Corbin sits in not one, not two, but three different counties in southeastern Kentucky, Whitley, Knox and Laurel counties.

Each claim part ten years in the making, downtown Corbin continues to change and grow.

Here's more from the tri county city that brought us Kentucky Fried Chicken.

And tonight's Monday's on Main segment.

When I came in as mayor almost six years ago now, you know, my goal was to make sure that there would be a Corbin in 100 years.

You know, I was I was looking far into the future.

It's like, okay, we're a railroad town without a railroad.

Coal has left, you know, our part of the state and with that comes our railroad jobs and all the ancillary businesses.

So how are we going to make sure that Corbin is going to stay on the map?

And I think we recognized that we were going to have to do something to re-energize our downtown because, you know, once the businesses started moving off of Main streets like they did so many places back in the eighties, you know, you really saw the heartbeat of your town starting to to really disintegrate before your eyes.

Corbin has been one of the trailblazers in southeastern Kentucky in this region as far as downtown revitalization.

Corbin began with really buying into the diverse food scene with people like Kristen, with the Wrigley that opened and then Seasons Restaurant downtown at the depot.

There really many options for people in the region to come to Corbin for a night out.

Corbin does a good job of creating that cluster of places to go, so you might jump in the car from 30 minutes away from here and say, We're going to Corbin tonight, but you don't have a destination in mind.

You parked the car and get out and see what's where you feel like going into.

And that's something that's really working for Corbin.

When we when we talked about expanding, we didn't it was an experiment to go to such a small town.

You know, I think Corbin has 8 to 9000 citizens.

So we didn't know if we wanted to expand to such a small town, but we wanted to see what happened.

So it's been it's been fantastic.

What makes a town such as Corbin successful as far as a small town being revitalized and all that is the there's not a single everybody.

It's not a single identity.

So it's restaurants, it's coffee shops, it's all that.

And as long as you've got a very eclectic group of people, I think that really helps.

What we did do was really put a focus on our downtown.

We made it our goal to stabilize our downtown and create a place for people that would be a destination.

And, you know, given our railroad history and our downtowns right on the railroad, you know, we already had some assets that we could then build off of.

So we've got a beautiful Depot train Depot that's historic that, you know, we've fixed up we've added some trains that people can see.

We added some decorative lighting downtown.

We added some planters, things like that, you know, really made a difference.

And then, of course, we've got Harland Sanders.

So that's our big claim to fame.

And they've just done a $3 million renovation to Sanders Cafe, and it's just fabulous.

Corbin also wanted to focus on the art scene and so you'll see a lot of visual arts when you go through town, a lot of new murals, a lot of murals that have been here for at least the past five, six years, but really over the past few years, you've seen more and more murals popping up downtown.

Local food and local artists are really what we're focused on here in in Corbin.

I think that the arts are definitely a huge impact on the revitalization of any town.

I think Corbin has definitely harnessed it in a very specific and cautious way to move forward strategically.

Revitalization has taken a long time in Corbin, but I think it's definitely been worth it.

And it's the arts as far as applying that is one cog in a bigger machine.

And so allowing the arts to have a place at the table I think is huge for any community.

And I think that Corbin really sets the pace.

Quality of life is so important, especially a town of 8000.

So, you know, we created a, a place that people want to live.

People want to move here.

People want to stay here.

We welcome new people to come in to our community.

And it just keeps us vibrant.

It keeps us growing.

And yeah, it's just it's just a great place all the way around.

There's nothing like the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, in my opinion.

True statement.

As Corbin grows, so does traffic downtown.

The city is currently taking part in a Safer Streets for All campaign to find the best path forward for parking and driving on Main Street.