Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance

Harrisonburg recently completed an extensive public engagement process around developing a 20-year plan for our downtown’s future. Repeatedly, people asked for more programming, especially programming that is intentional about diversity, and repeatedly asked for the return of a beloved summer concert series that ended in 2018. The people have spoken, and we have our marching orders. Launching a Levitt AMP Your Town series will help us meet this community need. For almost 40 years, a volunteer group called Citizens for Downtown hosted free concerts on our Court Square. “Fridays on the Square” got started because those volunteers remembered downtown Harrisonburg during its heyday and wanted to help restore its vitality. In the 1970s, downtown suffered a decline and people avoided the area. This series gave people a reason to come back and laid the groundwork for a formal revitalization effort. Fridays on the Square was born out of a love for downtown. It was more than just free, live music. It was an expression of love for the community and a source of pride. This is why people miss it so much. Live music is an important aspect of life in Harrisonburg. You’ll find weekly bluegrass jams carrying on the musical traditions of the Shenandoah Valley and families building community around hosting “house concerts” at their homes or farms. Many house concerts start with a potluck and end with amazing music, often by a traveling musician on their way to or from Washington, DC. We would like to model a new concert series after the spirit of the house concert and Fridays on the Square. We will create a space where everyone feels welcome, where children can run and play, and where community members can come together and enjoy a high-caliber performance in their very own downtown. It will remind them of Fridays on the Square, will foster community pride, and further strengthen the bond of our community and sense of belonging we strive for.

Over the years, downtown Harrisonburg experienced a regrettable loss of many historic buildings. Today, we have a downtown that is sprinkled with vacant lots and surface parking lots. We want to encourage our community to think differently about our underutilized spaces and reimagine our downtown with more parks, inviting public spaces, and new buildings where there are currently blank spaces. We’d like to enliven this grassy lot with a vibrant music series that does double duty to facilitate togetherness and joy, while also challenging the community to think bigger about our future and how we use our land. For several years, a group of volunteers formed a nonprofit to build a public park on this grassy lot. We believe that a three-year concert series will showcase a better use of this space and help people experience the space differently and provide a vision to increase advocacy for this future park. During the downtown master planning public engagement, the community asked for more programming and for us to bring people together more often. They expressed overwhelming support for more green space and improved public spaces. This series would meet all of those goals. The more we can show how activated public spaces and intentional programming can engage our community members, the more we can do in the future with permanent projects and sustainable, on-going programming. People just need to see it and experience it first to believe it!