Judy Tighe marks 20 years leading Jacksonville Main Street

Judy Tighe’s 20-year run at Jacksonville Main Street lands in a downtown that looks far different from the one she found in 2001. What began in a tiny office as a fight to undo decades of decline around the square has become a broad business-revitalization effort centered on more than 190 businesses, more than 300 properties and a Main Street district that now draws shoppers, residents and event crowds to the heart of Jacksonville.

June 18 marked two decades since Tighe joined the organization, and her first major assignment was as practical as it was symbolic: canopy removal. Jacksonville Main Street says it persuaded the city that year to remove the first sections of brick and steel canopies that had obscured historic facades. That work came after urban renewal in the 1970s had led to the demolition of more than 60 buildings, a loss that reshaped the square for years and left downtown with a long recovery ahead.

The numbers now provide a sharper measure of what changed. Jacksonville Main Street says its district spans 44 square blocks, bounded by Beecher, Clay, Lafayette and Church streets, with 107 properties inside the Downtown National Register Historic District and more than 2,000 parking spaces supporting daily traffic and special events. The organization says its development arm, JEZDC, has provided more than $200,000 in project funding for permanent building improvements since 2000, while The Source reported that Jacksonville Main Street has helped grow more than two dozen businesses and cut vacancy rates by 80 percent.

That progress has not come from bricks and loans alone. Over the years, Jacksonville Main Street has backed the Wall Dog Murals projects in 2006 and 2019, the New Life Project residential rehabilitation work, security cameras and free Wi-Fi on the square. The group, founded in 1999, says its annual budget comes about 15% from the City of Jacksonville, less than 20% from donations and the rest from events and fundraisers, underscoring how much downtown upkeep depends on steady local participation.

Tighe’s milestone became a public moment at the June 18 concert downtown, where friends and supporters surprised her with purple shirts and cups marking her two decades of work. Jacksonville Main Street says 2024 was its 25th anniversary, and the organization’s own history reaches back even further, to March 10, 1825, when the city first laid out the public square. Two centuries later, the downtown is still being reshaped by the same basic question Tighe took on in 2001: how to keep the square economically strong, visibly historic and active enough to stay that way.