The conference, entitled “Main Street at a Crossroads,” was held at Skidmore Oct. 19-21 and featured tours of various city districts, more than 20 educational seminars and keynote speakers and presenters from across the country with expertise in revitalizing historic downtowns.

Professionals and those interested in preservation came into town from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont and across New York state. The conference also drew a Saratoga Springs contingent of nearly 30 volunteers and 20 attendees.

“It was great being able to host these people in Saratoga Springs,” said Carrie Woerner, executive director of the Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation. “Most people know the story of Saratoga Springs and how much it is a success story. So, for them coming from communities all over the state, some of which are in the condition Saratoga was 30 years ago, it really presents for them a beacon of hope that it can be done.”

Gary Ferguson, executive director of the Ithaca Downtown Partnership, often referred to Saratoga Springs in his presentation on the “Top Ten Challenges for Small and Mid-sized Cities,” using Saratoga as a town that has done things right over the years.

On top of Saratoga, Ferguson’s presentation featured real life main street examples from across the U.S.

“Saratoga and Ithaca are good examples of cities that have stayed relevant,” said Ferguson. “Their growth has been proportionate in the  core to the fringe.”

“A downtown that stays the same actually loses ground,” he said. He provided the example of Dayton, Ohio, in which two-thirds of the office space in the region was in the downtown in the 1980s.

By the 1990s, the downtown held the same amount of office space, but only one-third of the region’s office space was housed in downtown.

“Look at Saratoga, a city that thought long and hard about how to manage growth. Downtowns are all about density,” said Ferguson. “Dense urban development is difficult and expensive.

Density requires community planning, tools and the right zoning in place to promote higher development. Saratoga has some great examples of new growth done right: mass, hight, scale and infill.”

He included in the top challenges facing downtowns: battling suburban growth and sprawl on the fringe of the city; retaining a critical mass of retail and office space in downtown; keeping downtown a regional  priority for both city and fringe residents; living in the past and ignoring historical trends; fighting for downtown density; finding and clustering traffic generators that bring people downtown; fighting lethargy and apathy amongst residents and younger generations that don’t understand the importance of the downtown – “a generation with no affiliations to downtown”; not being afraid to stand apart or brand the city, something he noted Saratoga has done well with the horses; bringing back downtown residents; and finding financial resources.

The program drew several Saratoga residents, something Woerner hopes will happen more and more.

“I think to a certain extent educational conferences can be a bit off-putting and people think that if they’re not a professional in the field they’re not going to get it. And I hope that over time we’re going to get an even larger local audience. I can't speak for other communities, but I certainly have observed that people in our city are very engaged in the questions of how much development should we have downtown, what kind of development, how high is too high, what are the traffic or transportation issues we have to wrestle with, how does that impact our historic buildings or neighborhoods, and more. These are the kinds of issues we dealt with at the conference and I think the more people that get exposed to discussions of these sorts and who can talk to people from other communities to learn their experiences and discover  some real life solutions. I do think there is a real value to the community out of a conference like this.”

For more information on the conference and the Preservation Foundation, logon to http://www.charityadvantage.com/saratogapreservation/Home.asp.