For three days next month, Woodstock will be the beneficiary of an influx in sales in the form of hotel stays and restaurant dining, when the Main Street Institute is held at the Chambers at City Center downtown.

It’s just one of a few bright spots predicted for the city, the Woodstock Downtown Development Authority and Woodstock Main Street program, according to city Economic Development Director Billy Peppers.

Peppers addressed the City Council with downtown business work plans for the coming year at its Jan. 23 meeting. Recapping the last year, he said the downtown welcomed 25 new businesses and 210 new jobs.

“That number reflected about 7 percent of all jobs in downtowns in Georgia, so that’s a pretty strong number for us, and there was $9.3 million in public-private investment,” Peppers said.

Last year also saw 25 building rehabilitations at a value of $7.7 million of private sector money and 32 housing units in the downtown area received permits of occupancy.

Woodstock Main Street, which was certified by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs last year, regularly awards façade grants to downtown shopkeepers who want to dress up their building’s exterior, and to date, there has been $29,000 in approved grants, representing about $75,000 in additional private investment, Peppers said.

(LEFT: Dean’s Store, Woodstock’s Visitors Center, is a large part of keeping history alive in the city while it continues to grow. In 2011, the Woodstock Visitors Center welcomed 8,714 visitors, making it a record-breaking year. The previous record, which was set in 2009, was 6,565. In the past five years, the Woodstock Visitors Center has welcomed 33,018 people, including visitors from 48 states, the District of Columbia, and from 39 different countries around the world. A fifth-grade class from Carmel Elementary School (pictured) visited last year to hear a presentation by city historian Juanita Hughes. Photo provided by Kyle Bennett)

March 21-23, some 100-150 Main Street managers, board members, elected officials and staff from across the state will attend the Main Street Institute at the Chambers at City Center, 8534 Main St., where the council meetings are regularly held.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to show off Woodstock, and I know a lot of people are excited,” Peppers said. “There are two trainings a year for downtown development authorities and Main Street programs, and we’re on the waiting list for 2013 and something happened with the city that was supposed to host it this spring, so we were able to fill in that gap.”

Woodstock was contacted about becoming the new host late last year for the program, which is focused on creating more successful downtown programs in Georgia. According to Peppers, conference attendees are expected to spend between $40,000 and $60,000 downtown and at local hotels during their stay, checking out the fare at local restaurants, which have proliferated in the last 12 months. Main Street Woodstock has agreed to contribute $1,500 toward the three-day event.

Peppers said a host of events are planned for the coming year to further generate interest in downtown and aid local business owners. Detailing the DDA’s and Main Street Woodstock’s work plans, he said one program he’s excited about introducing is a small business marketing grant program.

“This is a project that I’ve heard about in Carrollton, which I thought was a great project and they encourage small businesses in the downtown area to be innovative in their ideas for how they will spend money to develop a marketing campaign for both their business and the downtown area,” he said. “We’ll try to launch that this spring.”

And, in March, the Small Business Academy will be launched, which is designed as a tool for entrepreneurs to make sure they have the groundwork before starting a business. Peppers said the academy is for people already in business who may be struggling to get additional financing and people trying to reorganize their business, as well as those just starting out.

The academy will be comprised of four courses. One focuses on business plans and financing, with Kennesaw State University’s Small Business Development Center coming to talk about what a business plan is and how to develop it.

“Along with that, we’ll have a panel of our local bankers that can answer specific questions about what you need to look at for business loans, the types of documents you should bring in,” Peppers said.

Other courses include marketing and advertising, customer service and visual merchandising. He said his hope is that once the courses are finished, his group will be able to show participants vacant retail space in the city where they could start a business.

“And at that point, we would work with a real estate agent to be on site and hopefully set up some time to meet with business licensing and the building department as well, just to meet some faces and make some appointments, so that when they do decide to go into business, it’s not a lot of hurdles upfront,” he said.

At last year’s City Council retreat (this year’s is Feb. 10-12 in Hiawassee), the economic development department was tasked with trying to work with a higher education partner to bring graduate courses downtown, and that has been realized. The city has plans to team up with Reinhardt University to offer graduate courses, which Peppers said will be useful for people who work 40-hour-a-week jobs and don’t have time to attend the university up in Waleska.

Other items listed in the 2012 work plans include: the production of a “quality of life” magazine, which will be a 64-page publication that markets Woodstock and its services to be placed in hotels and distributed to residents and businesses.

Mayor Donnie Henriques said he agreed with the direction economic development is headed.

“One of the things we’ve talked about at the DDA meetings and Main Street, and I think we need to carry a step further is, now we’ve got to do this. I think now is the time to strike with marketing, creating marketing plans for downtown,” he said.

The second business expo will be held at Woodstock High School after a successful run last year, both the DDA and Main Street have put aside monies for public art downtown, and more funding is being put toward holiday decorations downtown. Peppers added that the city will inaugurate the Taste of Woodstock, something he said will be modeled after Alpharetta’s and Newnan’s events.

Money also is being put aside in the coming year for improvements to the parking lot behind the Main Street shops, at Wall and Mill streets, as well as pathways leading up to the businesses’ rear entries and the addition of lighting for safety.