When speaking of Mexico’s future city business leaders are optimistic but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of work to do to improve the city’s economics.

City officials along with city business leaders jumped on a Zoom call last week with Missouri Mainstreet senior program specialist Ben White to talk about a plan to form a not-for-profit (see related story in this issue). During the meeting White asked what those on the call believe to be Mexico’s greatest assets. Mexico Chamber of Commerce Director Dana Keller jumped in right away.

“Our people,” Keller said.

Keller was quickly backed up. Gina Raines, marketing president for Commerce Bank in Mexico, said the city has created a culture of support.

“There’s a culture here that we are a town that has everything you need,” Raines said. “We’re not too big, we’re not too small. I think the culture is great here.”

Lois Brace, who was representing Presser Arts Center piggy-backed off of Raines comment.

“When our people participate in a program everybody turns out for it,” Brace said. “They support themselves very well.”

Mayor Vicki Briggs said she’s seeing a lot out of Mexico’s young folks that gives her optimism.

“This town has terrific potential,” Briggs said. “I also see a lot of young people that are potential leaders. We have a future and I think those things are important.”

Although the list of positives for the city of Mexico is long, so is the list of challenges. One of the biggest issues city business leaders pointed out is the city’s image. Keller said the downtown could get more help from the city in the form of ordinances. Keller gave some examples of not allowing dwellings on the first floor of buildings or allowing storage in the front part of buildings. She also added that some out-of-town building owners don’t care about their properties.

“We’ve visited a lot of communities and those communities have more stringent ordinances or regulations for the downtown,” Keller said.

Keller also brought up poverty and homelessness which seems to plague Mexico more than other towns of similar size. The Handi-Shop suffered a fire over the weekend when an alleged homeless person started a fire trying to stay warm and Mexico Public Safety on Monday was investigating a break in right off the Square where food was eaten and drug paraphernalia left behind.

“I think our demographics have changed and there’s more population that we would deem homeless or displaced,” Keller said. “All of that impacts your downtown as well as the rest of the community and economy.”

Another complaint is the city’s gateways and their aesthetic appeal and increasing blight. The city in the last few years has started a program for old build demolition but more help is needed. 

“You come into Mexico from a lot of directions and it’s not eye appealing,” Raines said. “We have businesses or homes that are run down and I think a lot of towns this size have that challenge but Mexico seems to have its fair share.”

Over the last three decades Mexico has also seen a decline in its manufacturing sector. This past year the city lost Soft Surroundings but if you go back even further the loss of jobs is staggering compared to a few generations ago.

“It’s hard to bring our people back and have the work for younger people to sustain and keep a family here,” Raines said. “That’s hard with our size of community.”

“It’s hard to attract the young people back when we don’t have an economic base,” Brace added. “We’ve had too many industries jump ship.”

Some of the local business owners say they also struggle to keep shoppers in town and oftentimes lose sales to bigger communities like Columbia. Sparkly Pig owner April Thomas said it’s something her business struggles with.

“A lot of people just think, ‘Oh I have to go to Columbia,’” Thomas said. “They don’t even consider that there are some really great local businesses.”

White said once the city starts working the Mainstreet program a lot of those issues will start to turn around.

“If they see all these negative things happening they’re going to jump on that bandwagon,” White said. “But they could be persuaded. If they see some of the positive things happening  we can flip that switch.”

Thomas believes they can do it.

“There’s so much potential here and it’s absolutely beautiful and we’ve just got to make it happen,” Thomas said.