It's about pride and it's about building that community spirit with generations.

Those are the goals will tell you how a western Kentucky town is striving to meet them.

And we like to say that we're everything you like about Kentucky, all in one place.

See how old businesses and new ideas have helped create a thriving downtown in Campbellsville?

We we just want to be a destination spot for south eastern Kentucky.

Plus, we head to the mountains of Pikeville to see why this city is climbing.

The list of must see Kentucky destinations.

It's amazing to think that our community is small and its challenges.

We are.

That said, so much music to come out of our area that's impacted the entire world and the musical greats who song lyrics put Western Kentucky on the map.

Now taking center stage in Central City production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the Katy Millennium Fund.

Good evening and welcome to this special edition of Kentucky edition.

We thank you so much for joining us.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Tonight, we're taking a trip around the state to the cities we featured on our Mondays on main segments throughout the year.

These are cities that are fostering economic growth by investing in their downtowns, supporting small businesses, and creating a sense of community.

Our first stop, Guthrie in Todd County, is our Laura Rogers shows us this southwestern Kentucky town of 1400 people is working to preserve its history, attract visitors and make a local proud to call their pocket of Kentucky home.

This mural started in the rainy month of May.

Tennessee muralist Ken Bradford using shades of blue to tell the story of the blues and downtown Guthrie, Kentucky.

Guthrie wanted to pay homage to that.

The town had a venue on the chitlin circuit giving Black musicians a place to play and perform during racial segregation.

So this was inspired by a small juke joint or soul blues club that existed and was really pop, and they would come to small towns like ours and play some of the best music, in my opinion, of that era.

Tracy Robinson As executive manager of Guthrie Main Street.

I grew up here, so it has a special place in my heart.

In the early 2000s, the need was realized for historical preservation in Guthrie and a way to support more retail and restaurants.

There were a lot of vacant buildings.

There were a lot of businesses leaving and moving to the edges of bigger cities.

They joined the Kentucky Main Street program and came up with the plan.

We're nationally certified through Main Street America, so we use the four point approach, which is organization, promotion, economic vitality, and design.

The mural is the latest project to beautify Guthrie painted at Longhurst Park, the site of summer concerts that begin later this month.

Public Art is an investment in a city and towns.

It tells them like you're important.

Come spend time here, you're invited.

That's exactly the message Small businesses want to see in retail.

You want people to get out of their cars and you want them to walk and you want them to see all the things that you have to offer.

Two years ago, Todd County native Andrea mitchell Koski moved into the former Longhurst general store to open a business of her own, naming it Longhurst and Liddell's after her late grandmother.

They just kind of fell into place that this was going to be retail slash cafe.

We've kind of expanded our menu to different things as the ice cream, the milkshakes, coffees.

We do a lot of bakery, a lot of catering.

Her efforts have paid off.

Recently, Kentucky Main Street awarded Mel Koski, Entrepreneur of the Year.

I was really honored and shocked and honored.

Guthrie is also the birthplace of poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren.

His childhood home, now a museum.

It's a great place.

The committee that has preserved that museum for the last couple of decades have done an outstanding job.

If you come together, you need to go to the Robert Penn War Museum, a railway town that's home to history and heritage.

The community embracing the past, looking ahead to the future.

I would love to see it brought back to life to what it was 50, 60 years ago.

It's about pride and it's about building that community spirit with generations.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Laura Rogers.

Our next stop 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.

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 from 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 that 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 wouldn't have survived.

We rebounded quickly with the acquisition of Amazon.

The first Amazon distribution center was located in Campbellsville in Kentucky, and from that 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 is, you know, 114 years old.

They can't go anywhere else.

We've outlived J.C. Penney's dog hairs.

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.

I know sounds tacky.

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

And we can do that quite often.

Success and then the longevity of their 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, you know, 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.

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 you know the type of things that you need to do in order to to make our our community more attractive?

Roddenberry 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 individual.

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.

So we have about 50 artists in our store.

Most of them are from Kentucky, and then we have a few outside of Kentucky.

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.

All 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.

It's the first Kentucky city you come to traveling north on Interstate 65, Franklin, Kentucky, the seat of Simpson County is just 45 miles north of Nashville and quickly growing.

What remains the same, however, is the same southern charm of downtown, home to retail and restaurants.

Our Laura Rogers takes us on a tour.

From race horses to bourbon.

Franklin is big on Kentucky heritage.

The location is paramount because we sit on our 65 between Nashville and Bowling Green, and we have so many travelers that travel at 65 every day, and many of them stop at the Franklin exit, drawn to attractions like Kentucky Downs and Dueling Grounds Distillery.

People want to see horses when they come to Kentucky.

People want to see bourbon.

Those are the two things they usually mainly think of.

So we have both of those here.

It's also the home of professional golfer Kenny Perry, who owns a golf course in Franklin.

Kenny has brought a lot of notoriety to Kentucky and especially to Franklin.

He's just a good person and that is really important, I think.

And he kind of exudes that small town family charm that we have here in Franklin.

Amy Ellis is executive director of the Simpson County Tourism Commission.

Before that, she spent several years at the helm of Franklin Simpson Renaissance, which evolved out of the Main Street program.

Our main street is essentially 31.

W so our main street runs from the north end to the south in well, actually to the state line here in Franklin.

But our heart of our main street is our downtown.

Each year we try to do a new project.

Kim Roberts now leads Franklin Simpson Renaissance.

Franklin is a growing town.

She and Amy Ellis often collaborate to support downtown revitalization.

We work really close with the merchants to try to help their businesses grow, bring new businesses, and but a part of Rene's is a part of my job is keeping the downtown pretty, you know, through beautification.

Nearly a decade ago, efforts ramped up to save historic buildings on the square.

Local investors renovating those buildings to bring new life and new commerce to Main Street.

Total renovation pulled bricks off the building brick by brick, cleaned them and put them back on the building.

That led to the sale of more historic properties.

So we've sold about 12 buildings downtown and have seen major renovations in those 12 buildings in the last ten years.

Opening a small business does carry financial risk, and much of their focus remains on supporting downtown merchants.

It's hard.

It's hard for new businesses in a small town.

They have to have that ability to hang on through some pretty hard times before they reach that goal of having regular customers.

That would become the idea behind the mustard seed markets.

Let me just tell you the story.

Mustard seed market actually came about from a conversation that my mom and I had had.

Tammy Keri and Amy Ellis had traveled to other cities similar to the size of Franklin to see what they were doing to get people downtown.

When we walked in the front doors, I just looked at Amy and I said, This is the coolest place I've ever been.

That business in Gallatin, Tennessee, would become the inspiration for Mustard seed market.

I just made the comment.

I said, I wish we had something like that in Franklin.

And Mom looked at me and she said, Well, let's open one.

Eight years ago they did, providing vendor space for small businesses, not quite ready to invest or move full time to their own shop.

And I feel like it just gives small businesses the opportunity to really start out to kind of figure out the business and then hopefully be able to grow into their own storefront.

Carrie says she saw a major push to shop local and small during the pandemic.

When 2021, we saw an upsurge in sales and we're doing great and we've kind of plateaued after that to draw more foot traffic.

Franklin Simpson Renaissance hosts downtown events, including summer concerts that draw thousands of people to the historic district.

We have some really good bands.

We're getting bigger every year.

Even though we're small, we're big, small towns with big hearts.

But we're always known for we can make big things happen in this town.

And the reason being because we have a lot of dedicated, true Franklin people that love our town.

We all love our town.

We want to see it grow.

We want to see all of our businesses succeed.

It all comes together to create an atmosphere that keeps both local and tourists coming back.

I don't know that if we hadn't flipped our downtown over and made it a little bit more accessible to people and more inviting to people that maybe we wouldn't had that success.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Laura Rogers.

Kim Roberts says there are also grant opportunities for building owners to do renovations and improvements with a historic preservation ordinance to give them guidelines.

Natural disasters and the loss of a major industry almost devastated the city of Pine Valley.

But the state of Bell County is bouncing back with plans to transform its downtown and bring in new businesses.

In 1977, there was a huge fire that destroyed most of downtown and most of the surrounding areas.

And that seems like a really long time ago.

But I can remember going to the lookout up on Pine Mountain and looking at it was like looking at it like.

So it has overcome a lot and we have lost like the coal mining business, which was the main supporter, I guess, of the economic part.

So it has gone through a lot and we want to just see it just revive.

Basically, we were the first actual new business to open in downtown town.

Well, we went through the main street incentive program that they had.

Main Street Panvel is a group of individuals and small businesses and businesses around town that we're looking to revive downtown and still preserve its history.

And we end up opening in Panvel because the rent itself was a lot lower, you know, where you could afford it and still make money before you could come down and after everybody had gone home from work.

After 5:00, you might not see a car, you know, on the street.

When we first opened, a lot of these buildings were vacant.

They were boarded up.

So to see this many businesses around the square, that's a big improvement from what it was eight years ago.

I ended up here because of my hairstylist.

Actually.

She was getting ready to open her salon here and wanted to know if I would come on and wanted to rent a little space.

And I did.

And now I'm going on five years full time.

We started at the beginning and we took over here.

We were just doing delivery and pick up.

My wife and I, and we were redoing this building, so we were working restaurant and on the building and like, I think the first phase was mostly what you don't see.

It was like the underground pipe work and things like that.

The second part will be more of a motorization and the streets will be nice, the sidewalks will be nice.

So we're going to go more for like that outdoor look with light poles, just different things.

That brings you back to an older, more vintage town.

And that's the feel that we're going for.

I think, though, that once all the works and it'll be well worth it, I would like to continue growing, hopefully at a second location in the future.

And as for possible, I hope they keep bringing in more diverse small businesses and keep growing our small town.

So people in this community have supported us tremendously.

I mean, you would think that I was born and raised in Pikeville, Kentucky.

The more businesses in town, it helps everyone.

So there's a lot well, new businesses in town.

This is the most I've ever seen in my whole life.

I was in Covington.

I had met a couple from North Carolina and they had already been to Chain Rock.

So they'll pass through and they'll get to enjoy it for the day.

But we're trying to make this a destination place and I think we're on the right path for that.

Final is known for the Kentucky Mountain Laurel Festival, which is the state's longest running festival.

It's held every year during Memorial Day weekend.

Our next city sits in not one, not two, but three different counties in southeastern Kentucky, Whitley, Knox and Laurel Counties.

Each claim part of Corbin, the tri county city that brought us Kentucky Fried Chicken, has shown tremendous growth in the last ten years and has plans to keep growing.

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 you 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, you know, 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.

Several of Kentucky's most beloved musical heroes have roots in Muhlenberg County.

That includes the Everly Brothers, whose homecoming concerts drew thousands of people to the area.

Central City is now home to a new park that pays homage to their musical heritage.

Our Laura Rogers takes us there for our last stop on our Main Street tour.

People say, was it the water?

Was it what's in the air from the Everly Brothers?

Known for initially country, then the birth of rock and roll.

John Prine.

Americana.

Grammy Awards Galore.

Music and Muhlenberg County have a longstanding connection, a significance now immortalized by bronze statues and the center of Central City.

We are sitting at Farmers Bank and Trust Festival Square in downtown Central City.

It all began back in the 1980s when the Everly Brothers, who had roots in the area, they were here regularly when they were growing up, caught wind that the Central City Police Department needed new radios and they called up here and out of clear blue and said, Well, we'll buy you radios.

A city parade to thank them for their generosity turned into a homecoming concert.

That single concert actually led to 15 years of Everly Brothers homecoming music festivals.

And a regular guest throughout those years was John Prine, those that remember Paradise and Daddy, Won't You Take Me Back to Me Home by County.

Middleburg County is recognized all over the world because of that song.

You can learn more about the city's musical heritage and homegrown artists like Merle Travis, thumb picking legend Mose Rager and flutist Jim Walker here at the Muhlenberg County Music Museum.

We've now had guests from every state plus Washington, D.C. and 29 different countries.

And while they're here, they can also explore the Kentucky Motorsports Museum and Hall of Fame and downtown Central City.

I love small towns.

Retired schoolteacher Peggy Shoemaker and her close friend Terry opened Coffee Central just a few years ago.

Green Coffee Bean What kind of question around what central city need?

And so many people say at a coffee shop.

And when they heard that we were going to open a coffee shop here, it brought some excitement to the town.

I love that our community is very close knit.

Allison Randall and her mother opened Southern Pine to bring more shopping and retail to Central City.

My mom just asked me one day, Why don't we do this?

Why don't we start our own business?

The shop is named after their family farm in Muhlenberg County.

It's just blocks away from the new festival Square.

It's a huge source of pride.

Never dreamed we'd have something like this in our county center city.

The city and fiscal court provided some funding, but much of the money came from across the country and beyond.

Some Everly Brothers fans in Europe donated when they found out through social media that we were doing this.

Mike Mercer says he's also proud the majority of the project.

Everything about the statues was created by local talent sharks.

A lot of people that all of this could get done with Central City, Monmouth County entrepreneurs.

Music runs deep in Milbury County.

And going back to that original question of why.

Dr. Freddy Mays believes it all goes back to the region's coal mining history.

They would gather on porches at the end of the day and do something.

So music was what got it all started.

It was the coal mining heritage of playing music and singing music and getting together.

Project organizers hope this park will also encourage people to come together, building on a strong foundation of community pride.

Hopefully it's going to be something that people will come to and want to see for years to come.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Laura Rogers.

Festival Square also pays tribute to the community volunteers who helped the Everly Brothers homecoming take place all those years.

Their largest crowd drew 20,000 people to downtown central City.

What a great way to look at all the magnificent development happening in main streets all across our great commonwealth.

And we hope to see you tomorrow night at 630 Eastern, 530 Central for Kentucky Edition, where we inform, Connect and Inspire.

Subscribe to our Kentucky Edition Email newsletters and watch full episodes and clips at Ket dawg.

You can find us on the PBS video app on your mobile device and smart TV, and we encourage you to send us a story idea by email to public affairs at Ket dawg.

Thanks very much for watching.

Take really good care and I'll see you soon.