Drybread steps up as economic development director for Edinburgh

EDINBURGH, Ind. (Daily Journal) — Edinburgh’s new director of economic development is setting her sights on improving downtown.

SaraBeth Drybread, the town’s previous community development director, has assumed a new role as director for economic development. She said she received a call in mid-July moving into the new position and hopes to help create a “thriving downtown” with new businesses, fewer empty buildings, more activities and places to go.

As the town council was looking for a new town manager, Drybread said they looked at the community’s needs and saw she was already working on economic development, so the council decided to upgrade her title. She began the new position on Aug. 12 and will continue as director for the John R. Drybread Community Center.

Drybread said she is excited to use her skillset for economic development.

“In a small community, everyone is wearing multiple hats,” Drybread said. “For the last few years, I had to be very focused on events and programs in town, marketing, small business support, everything from all the social media, graphic design, everything like that, and so this is really an opportunity to focus on where my skill set is and really focus on downtown.”

Feedback gathered while creating the new comprehensive plan indicates, community members want town officials to prioritize downtown, Drybread said. She aims to focus on that area of Edinburgh and she believes downtowns are the “heartbeat” or identity of a community.

Specifically, Drybread wants to recruit businesses into downtown, help implement activities and places for all ages to enjoy and figure out what business mix the town should have. She mentioned absentee landlords and underutilized downtown buildings as issues the town is currently dealing with.

“We’ve got a lot of empty buildings. We’ve got a lot of buildings that are underutilized and we have a lot of landlords who are working really hard every single day to make their business thrive and grow in downtown, and it is difficult for them when they are trying so hard and then there’s not another active business for almost the entire block,” Drybread said. “So, we’ve got to create a structure and a process to where we are attracting and recruiting landlords that are going to have those same values of historic preservation, and a thriving downtown with retail and service businesses that are provided.”

Drybread said the town also needs to focus on quality of life for residents including places for people to go in the evenings or on the weekends, walking and biking trails, shopping, places to eat, things to do and more.

At times, development has been a delicate issue among residents and town officials as the community looks toward the future. At an Aug. 20 meeting, the plan commission approved an approximately 288-acre mixed-use development with residential, commercial and park uses dubbed Castle Rock which would be the largest development in the town’s recent history.

A handful of community members shared concerns like flooding and wells running dry, neighborhood safety, aesthetics and more stress on local stores because of the increase in population. Others in the community favored the project because it will increase the number of students in the school system and grow the town’s and the school district’s tax base.

Drybread understands and shares the concerns of residents but also sees how new development could positively impact the future both tomorrow and in the coming decades.

“I hate to see farmland turned over for warehouses or storage or just to see farmland developed. The farms of America are the backbone of this country … I also see the struggle that we have with having enough kids in the school and being able to help the tax base in that area,” she said. “We’re so landlocked here … There’s not a lot of places that we can develop and have accessible for growth. It can be a very scary thing. It can be daunting … We always look into the future and what is best for the community in the long run.”

She also hopes to learn from other communities comparable in size and see the positives and challenges of how they’ve grown.

This article originally appeared in the Daily Journal.