STARKVILLE — The Greater Starkville Development Partnership, Starkville’s community development organization, hosted its 20th-anniversary award ceremony virtually Thursday morning.
Typically an in-person banquet, the Partnership held this pre-recorded event due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in order to keep the community safe, said Paige Watson, Partnership special events and projects coordinator. The online presentation featured a celebratory video with multiple hosts, interviews and award announcements.
“If you had said our 20th-anniversary celebration would be virtual, I wouldn’t have believed that,” Watson said. “This year, that’s what we had to do to set a good example and be as safe as possible for the community.”
Watson said she has been planning the ceremony for months. She said the Partnership board did not know how the public would react to the awards being virtual, but it has received a great reception from the Starkville community.
“We knew it was still important to find a way to honor these award winners, so we figured out a creative way to get that done,” she said.
During the pandemic, the board has had to find new and innovative ways to support its partners, and it knows the importance of sharing resources with them, Watson said. While the Partnership has been able to have some of its events in person, such as unWine Downtown, most of them have been virtual.
“We typically have a lot of spring events, but we’re really trying to focus right now on summer and fall,” Watson said. “We’re hopeful we’ll be able to have some sort of normalcy by then.”
The board also created a monthly newsletter called “Partnership Matters” to inform their partners of COVID-19 related resources they could use, Watson said.
Partnership CEO Mike Tagert said the organization has shifted its focus from in-person marketing to finding supportive revenues that small business operators could use, such as the Paycheck Protection Program, a federal program that provides loans to help businesses during the pandemic. He said the Partnership members have adapted to these changes.
“It has been a challenge, but the organization and the community have stepped up in various ways, and that was evident in the awards ceremony today,” Tagert said. “You can see the leadership, involvement and commitment of our community.”
Tagert stepped into his current position in January, about two months before the COVID-19 pandemic made it to Mississippi. He said assuming this role during such an unconventional time has been difficult, but with the support of the Partnership board, he is embracing the challenges and is looking forward to a future without COVID-19.
“I came on board, and (two months) later we experienced the shutdown,” Tagert said. “I never really had a baseline to know what a bit of normalcy looked like. I do look forward to seeing what the norm looks like in our business community when this pandemic is over.”
Greater Starkville Development Partnership award winners
■ The R. Clay Simmons Exemplary Enterprise Award went to Strange Brew Coffeehouse, distinguishing them as the business of the year.
■ The top community service award, the T.E. Veitch Community Service Award, went to Nellah Taylor.
■ The Starkville Main Street Association named the Starkville Area Arts Council as the 2020 Partner of the Year and granted the Steve Langston Downtown Revitalization Award to Mayor Lynn Spruill.
■ The Starkville Convention and Visitors Bureau presented the Crystal Pineapple Tourism Award to the late Dan Camp, creator of the Cotton District.
■ The Oktibbeha County Economic Development Authority honored II-VI with the Industry of the Year Award.
■ The Partnership Ambassadors organization recognized four members for 19 years of service since the organization’s creation: Peggy Buckley, Melanie Mitchell, Pat Lane and Nina Welch Wofford.
■ The Starkville-Oktibbeha Achieving Results (SOAR) honored three teachers in the Starkville Oktibbeha school district: Chelsi Brasher, Erin Landrum and Vijay Pacharne.
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