PLACEMAKING | Redeveloping with Love
A small business in a small town shows that dedicated citizens can still make a difference
Written By Satchel Walton
This is the second installment of a three-part series on Southern entrepreneurs catalyzing place through restaurants, retail, and rejuvenation.
Marsh Collective of Opelika, Alabama, defies easy categorization. Are they developers? Investors? Entrepreneurs? They don’t fit in a box because they have many functions and priorities: They are locally focused, faith-driven community builders, and they’re effective in accomplishing their goals because each focus supports the other.
The company, founded by John and Ashely Marsh, consults on projects involving the redevelopment of historic buildings, and they have a particular passion for the 10 square blocks of Opelika that they call home. Their work has been credited with helping to revitalize the city’s Downtown.
“Love of place is a powerful force in a person's life,” John wrote in an email. “We are lifetime lovers and committed to this place. If you keep thinking someone should ‘do’ something, you may be the someone.”
The Marshes are open about past difficulties in their lives and in their marriage, including addiction. However, they were able to overcome those struggles and started renovating dilapidated homes and businesses in their area. As John wrote, they both “fell in love with Ash's hometown of Opelika. We learned that love of place is a powerful force.”
The Marsh Collective now advises other community-builders on the virtues and how-tos of placemaking and intentional design. They seek to imbue their projects with a feeling that they were thought out and designed for people to become part of something.
Describing these catalyzed places, John wrote, “they have a true social, spiritual, and economic capital model. We ask ourselves what could we do for the good of our city that would last 50 years, and no one be able to undo it.”
Urbanists think a lot about metro areas, but we might do well to consider small towns more often. The vast majority of urban streets in the South are in these towns, or in neighborhood centers that act like them. As the Marshes’ efforts have shown, the oft-abandoned Main Streets of America absolutely have the potential to thrive. The Marsh Collective now helps towns from Momence, Illinois, to Hogansville, Georgia, realize their potential.
Grassroots placemaking can provide inspiration for those of us who spend too much time on the agency-free negativity of national politics and news. Far from the futile pursuit of getting mad at things that you will never change lie the Marshes. Their world is driven by an abiding passion for the places around them alongside the people whom they know and love. It is encouraging to see local leaders invested on this level—both emotionally and financially—in their communities.
Satchel Walton is the Mencken Publishing Fellow on Urban Development. Follow him at @SatchelWalton