This Place Matters

MSGC kicks off historical preservation month with social media campaign
GRUNDY CENTER – In honor of National Historic Preservation Month, Main Street Grundy Center is pushing a new campaign called “This Place Matters” to highlight places around town that are meaningful to citizens, and to the community.
 
"This Place Matters” is a nationwide initiative that encourages people to share photos of places in their community that are meaningful to them, and to explain why.
 
Here in Grundy Center, MSGC Director Lisa Bienfang is hoping the initiative will help people realize and celebrate the places that make Grundy Center special to them, and to share their story with others.
 
“Our goal is to build community pride, and promote Grundy Center as a whole; since May is National Historic Preservation Month, it’s a perfect time to kick this off,” Bienfang said. “The hope is to attract visitors, maybe even new residents, by showing them what Grundy Center has to offer, and what makes this place special. It’s all about building a sense of place.”
 
Bienfang says this is an opportunity for the community to showcase its unique traits and characteristics, and it’s a chance for people of all ages and walks of life to demonstrate what matters to them, and she invites the community to join in on the campaign.
 
Citizens can do this by taking a photo of themselves at a place in Grundy Center that is meaningful to them, and sharing it on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat) with the #thisplacemattersgc hash tag. Or they can share it with MSGC through Facebook, and MSGC will share it on their Facebook page.
 
“Maybe someone would choose Manly Drug’s soda fountain because they had their first date there, or maybe someone would choose the courthouse because they got married there, or the pool because that’s where they had their first job,” Bienfang said. “It really is up to the individual person what place matters to them; and it doesn’t have to be a certain place, it could be a swing set at the park where they pushed their child; really any place that has sentiment attached to it for them.”
 
For herself, Bienfang says she chose the Center Theatre as someplace that matters for her.
 
“As a teenager, we used to have dances there,” she said. “They would have great music, have videos playing on the screen, it would be all lit up. They don’t do that anymore and it’s something that was unique to our generation, so there’s a lot of great memories there. That’s someplace that’s really special and that matters to me.”
 
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