Lauren Adkins
Assistant Director for Consulting Services
National Trust Main Street Center
1785 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Lauren Adkins began working for the National Trust National Main Street Center in 1991. Her work at the Center currently focuses on brand management, partnership development, and managing the Center’s consulting services division, including marketing, staff supervision, budgeting, and client relations. Ms. Adkins is a regular conference speaker and continues to provide consulting and training services. She has worked with hundreds of communities in 38 states, plus the District of Columbia, Canada, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Singapore. Ms. Adkins has served as a faculty member at various Main Street conferences and workshops, speaking on topics such as retail promotion, volunteer management, fundraising, market analysis, and strategic planning. She has authored several articles for Main Street News and served as a guest lecturer for Catholic University and George Washington University.
Before joining the National Trust for Historic Preservation, she served as a Main Street manager in Benton, Arkansas and as the executive director for a neighborhood commercial district revitalization project in Arlington, Virginia. Ms. Adkins holds a BA in Art and Archaeology from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York, New York. She is a native of Hot Springs, Arkansas. Ms. Adkins is the granddaughter and daughter of “Main Street” merchants who owned the Adkins Public Drug from 1934 to 1984, and her great, great, great, great, great grandparents opened the first general store in White County, Arkansas in the mid-nineteenth century.
Experience
National Trust Main Street Center®
National Trust for Historic Preservation
Washington, D.C.
Senior Program Associate, 1991 – 2007
Assistant Director for Consulting Services, 2007 – Present
Responsibilities and Accomplishments: Manages the four staff members who provide principal consulting on the Main Street Four-Point Approach. Solicits new clients for the National Trust Main Street Center and works closely with the network of Main Street coordinating programs. Speaks regularly at statewide commercial revitalization and economic development conferences. Areas of expertise include organizational development, volunteer management, community participatory planning, fund raising, market analysis, public relations, special event planning, and working with retail merchants. Key projects include:
- Helping Louisiana Main Street establish an urban component to the program and to designate four new Main Street programs in New Orleans as part of the Katrina recovery effort.
- Providing assistance in re-launching the Oregon Main Street program.
- Delivery of downtown consulting services to communities in West Virginia, Iowa, New Jersey, and Illinois.
- Delivery of business district consulting services to neighborhoods in Baltimore, Md., and the District of Columbia.
- Delivery of training programs in West Virginia, Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey, Iowa, Arkansas, Georgia, New Hampshire, Florida, and Indiana.
- Lead staff on Consensus Visioning Process for Downtown Wheaton, Md. Project included conducting caucus groups with residents, business and property owners, and developers to develop a consensus; and leading the team of design consultants in creating support drawings to articulate four development scenarios based on the consensus.
- Since 1991, has worked with Main Street programs and emerging commercial revitalization efforts in the following places: Virginia, Louisiana, Michigan, Illinois & Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor, Iowa, Nebraska, Idaho, New Jersey, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Indiana, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Singapore.
Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization (CPRO)
Arlington, Virginia
Executive Director, 1988 – 1991
Responsibilities and accomplishments: Managed all the committees and programmatic duties to revitalize one of the oldest suburbs in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The Columbia Pike corridor consists of traditional commercial buildings dating from the 1930s through the 1970s. Many of the streetscape design goals were directed toward adapting buildings built for an auto age to create a more pedestrian environment. Ms. Adkins advocated to local developers and management companies that the changes were necessary to improve economic conditions. Key projects include:
- Organization of first joint advertising package for businesses in district, including a mailing to 25,000 households, repeat ads in the Washington Post and on radio.
- Directed the business district's first comprehensive market analysis.
- Helped recruit a leading regional grocery store to the neighborhood, one of the first instances of a grocery store returning to an inner-city location.
Main Street Benton
Benton, Arkansas
Program Manager, 1986 – 1988
Responsibilities and accomplishments: Established all initial policies, created committees and helped the members of the board of directors learn their jobs for a new Main Street program. Located in one of America’s fastest growing counties in the 1980s, Benton’s merchants struggled to reach new residents. Besides reversing prevailing ideas to abandon the downtown, Ms. Adkins helped reposition the district to meet the new customers’ demands. Key projects include:
- Recruited new businesses, such as a pet shop, to the area and assisted existing businesses, like the locally owned department store, to improve their businesses.
- Established several incentive programs, including a privately funded grant and low-interest loan program.
- Organized the first Benton Wild Game and Fish Cook-Off in 1987.
- Instrumental in creating "Junior Main Street" program to involve local middle school and high school students with projects such as surveys for major downtown traffic and parking analysis. The initiative continued to grow after Ms. Adkin's departure and today is considered a successful example program of its kind.
Publications
- “Building Consensus: Helping Wheaton, Maryland Design its Future” Main Street News, Dec/2001
- “
- “From Housing to Main Street: Expanding the Mission of Community Development Corporations” (co-authored with Chris Johansen) Main Street News, May/2000
- “Managing Volunteers for a Stronger Main Street Program” Main Street News, Feb/1996
- “Rural Revitalization: Small City Main Street Programs” Main Street News, Feb/1993
- “On the Road” Column of Main Street News, 1996-present
- “Procedural Handbook for Local Historic District Commissions.” Published by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, 1985
Education
Columbia University
New York, New York
Completed all course work for an M.A. in Historic Preservation from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation.
Washington University
St. Louis, Missouri
B.A., 1984, Architectural History, Minor in Business Administration.
Additional Experience
Facilitator
Responsibilities and Accomplishments: Ms. Adkins has been developing her skills as a facilitator to help people reach consensus decisions through group process. Her skills have proven helpful in Main Street programs dealing with conflict and those creating short- and long-term work plans. She can work in a variety of environments, and is comfortable facilitating informal discussions as short as 15 minutes as well as formal board retreats of eight hours. Notable accomplishments include:
- In Port Huron, Mich., Ms. Adkins conducted a series of focus groups on a proposed streetscaping project. All focus groups were conducted outdoors on the sidewalks.
- In Wheaton, Md., she led a team of 15 consultants who worked with more than 200 community members to create new ideas on long-term development.
- In West Virginia, she lead a discussion involving all participants in the Main Street West Virginia program about how to help these mature Main Street programs continue to grow and innovate.
- In Washington, D.C., she has led two retreats for the National Capital Area Chapter of the American Planning Association.
President/Committee Chair
Art Deco Society of Washington, D.C.
Responsibilities and Accomplishments: Ms. Adkins helped The Hecht Company restore its warehouse resulting in a less expensive project than the original plan to reclad the building. She also helped the Hechinger’s Hardware Store rehabilitate a former Sears store to create an urban hardware store. On both projects, Ms. Adkins’ advice helped these companies use the lucrative investment tax credit to lower costs. She also helped the organization develop new leadership that resulted in a much more stable board of directors for the 10 years after she first became president.
