Leonard has applied for HGTV’s Hometown Takeover contest. If selected, the 400-population village would be featured on Home and Garden Television’s new show, Home Town Takeover, staring husband and wife Ben and Erin Napier. The show is a spinoff from Home Town, now in its fourth season, in which the couple renovates homes in their hometown of Laurel, Mississippi.
Takeover is a six-episode special event set to air on the network in 2021, according to hgtv.com. Instead of renovating single homes, they will basically restore and revitalize an entire town. Leonard’s fingers are crossed.
“The village desperately needs help,” said Village President Mike McDonald in the application video. “We don’t have the money or expertise to fix what we have, keep it looking the way it really should look.”
Phyllis Roe, who has long been involved with Leonard as a former member of the planning commission and head of the Strawberry Festival, came to McDonald with the idea to apply, after a friend sent her a link. “She did a lot of background work talking to all the residents and getting them involved, and everything evolved from that,” McDonald later explained to this reporter in a casual interview in front of the mill.
As part of the application, they produced a three-minute video with the help of Oxford Community Television. Even if the application doesn’t succeed, the video has generated buzz, garnering over 5,000 views on Facebook and YouTube within a matter of hours, according to OCTV’s production manager Teri Stiles.
The video features panning shots of the downtown area, the village office, the 100-year-old United Methodist Church, historic homes, and interviews with longtime residents.
The focal point of the video is Leonard Mill, which dates back to the 1800s and was purchased by the village in 2014. Since, then there has been ongoing efforts to refurbish the mill entirely through donations instead of tax dollars. Thus far the top has been repainted and a new roof has been put on the top and second levels.
The plan is for the mill to become a public recreation area and a major stop for people riding or walking on the Poly Ann Trail, which runs along former train tracks just east of the building. The proposed park would have amenities such as public restrooms, drinking fountains, bike racks, a visitor’s center and a gift shop.
“The HGTV project has really reignited a spark here in the village,” said McDonald, who has lived in the village for over 42 years.
He explained that “residents have higher expectations than they used to have about how the village should look and what our future is going to be like. And, we don’t have the commercial or the residential population to really support a large program which essentially is what is needed.”
Besides the mill, McDonald hopes HGTV can help fix up the downtown district, sidewalks, and put in better lighting downtown to entice more business into the area and occupy all the buildings. “I think most of the residents, I’d like to say all of the residents, really like Leonard and they like it the way it is. But they’d like it to be a little fresher. And, a project like this could do that for us.”
The application is currently under review. The contest did not specify towns be of a certain region or style, but they must have a population less than 40,000. “As far as I know, since it was a nation-wide contest, we’re competing against boroughs in New York and Southern estate type towns,” he said.
“Applicants should strive to highlight aspects of their town that make it special, fascinating, historic or unique — including distinctive features like vintage period architecture, special destinations or a classic main street,” the website stipulates. “Citizens of the selected town can expect to witness the rehab of multiple individual family homes as well as the revitalization of public spaces —parks, local diners or restaurants and outdoor recreation areas.”
“We definitely have some historic structures,” McDonald said. “We’ve got everything that could be a great attraction to get people to come visit Leonard, or possibly live here, but we’d like to freshen it up and put our best foot forward.”
He said it was somewhat bad timing for the video because it’s still winter, “so our community looks a little barren without the greenery, but I think they’ll see through that.”