New Beverly Main Streets Director Excited To 'Move Into A New Era'

BEVERLY, MA — Lindsay Barth hit the ground strolling as the new executive director of Beverly Main Streets.

A South Shore native, Barth moved to the city a decade ago and most recently worked in fundraising for the Landmark School before taking on a new role with the nonprofit community development organization five days before the planned revival of the Downtown Holiday Stroll this past weekend.

"It was such a great way for me to come in and meet a ton of business owners," she told Patch on Tuesday. "I think they all had a good time. It was a good time for us to throw our first holiday stroll. There was something like it years ago. But after many years of not having a holiday stroll, I thought this was a great way to start it back up and build on it for next year."

Barth comes to Beverly Main Streets at a time when many businesses are hoping to rekindle old traditions as city downtowns evolve amid the waning impact of the COVID-19 health crisis. With most of the downtown programming returning over the past two summers, and now the holiday season unfolding under less of the tenuous cloud of coronavirus that still existed overhead last year, Barth said she has arrived to find businesses motivated to work with each other to explore what's next collectively.

"In some ways, we've definitely bounced back," she said. "Businesses are starting to see people come back in person. But there is a new baseline. Not everybody is comfortable being back to what they were doing. You can't rely on the numbers you had pre-COVID. You definitely can't rely on the numbers you had during COVID.

"Everyone is seeing what we can make of things now. Everything has changed."

Beverly Main Streets' Small Business Saturday and Holiday Stroll efforts were good indications of what is possible in the downtown bustling renaissance as dozens of shops, breweries, restaurants and cafes offered discounts and promotions in hopes of bringing crowds downtown that could benefit all of them.

"That's something that naturally occurs here in the city," Barth said. "It's something that makes me excited about joining an organization like this. It's not something I have to come in and create and build. It's naturally here.

"It's synergistic. You are not just sending people to just one store or one restaurant. You are coming together as a community. That's the charm of Beverly. We stick together. I am really excited to work within that framework."

Barth said she felt that charm when she moved to Beverly from Western Mass. where she worked for a nonprofit music center in Northampton.

"It was a great way to get involved in what a nonprofit looks like," she said. "I got to do a bit of it all."

She said she has "found a home in Beverly" over the past decade and is now "really excited to work with such a valuable organization for Beverly's downtown."

She said one of her main objectives is to bring more involvement from residents outside of downtown to the major arts, music and seasonal celebration events that happen there each year.

"It's my belief that as community members we all have a vested interested in seeing our community thrive," she said. "Beverly is growing. Our goal is to help Beverly Main Streets grow alongside it."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)