George Bailey wasn't really a banker. As a main character in the classic film, It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart played George, a regular guy who serves his neighbors by helping them succeed. He's always there with a small loan or a friendly suggestion, and it's clear that Bedford Falls would be a crime-ridden dump without him. But as long as George is on the job, it's a fine hometown. George may have been the original Main Street manager. Today, there are about 1,500 people across the United States with jobs like his. The best Main Street managers are unfailingly bright, positive, and practical.

They are beloved in their hometowns, and usually unknown outside of them. "So much of it depends on personality," says Norman Mintz, the first real person to hold this job title. "The downtowns that are in good shape these days have at least one full-time person on the street, keeping an eye on things."

Main Street managers are the unsung heroes of an American success story. A generation ago, central business districts were in trouble. They had aging buildings, inadequate transportation, and stiff competition from suburban malls, and they were not fighting back effectively. Once-proud main streets were becoming unattractive, unsafe, and uninhabited after business hours. Many towns tried tearing down whole neighborhoods and starting over. But when these one-shot, big-money fixes were poorly planned, they usually made things worse. Main Street managers had a different idea - they sought big results by thinking small, by planning carefully, and by nursing neighborhoods back to health. More often, their approach succeeded.

Towns with thriving commercial districts have a lot in common, says Stephanie Redman, manager of the main street technical services program at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Success, she says, comes to those who continually push for improvement in four areas: design, organization, promotion, and economic restructuring. Since improvement must be a continuous process, the leadership must be committed for the long haul. That is why Main Street managers usually work for nonprofit organizations, with help from businesses and city government. Also, the best towns aren't afraid to take risks to make their visions real. They can prosper by moving the main highway out of town, as in Corning, New York; by betting millions on a not-for-profit downtown theater and art center, as in Panama City, Florida; or by planting gardens in the middle of the street, as in Coronado, California.

Vital downtown's also celebrate a strength that shopping malls can't match - a true sense of community.

And these community celebrations often center on the holidays. In 1946, George Bailey's story peaked when the whole town of Bedford Falls came to a Christmas party at his house. This year, on November 25, the crescendo in Chattanooga was more like an episode of Pokemon - Santa Claus hurled fireballs at local buildings, which exploded on contact with holiday lights as 30,000 spectators cheered. What follows is a sampling of four downtown's that are cause for celebration.

CHATTANOOGA, TN

The dramatic early successes of Main Street management attracted a lot of attention because so many downtown's were desperate. One early adopter was Chattanooga, a city of 150,000 along the Moccasin Bend of the Tennessee River, walled on three sides by steep ridges and mountains. Despite it beauty, the city suffered mightily when its heavy-industry economy collapsed in the early 1970's. At its low point, the city's air was so dirty that cars had to keep their headlights on during the day. African Americans were one-third of city residents, but they were largely ignored by the leadership. Downtown was a dismal collection of abandoned riverfront warehouses, struggling neighborhoods, and dying commercial districts.

Local philanthropies started the turn-around. In 1981, the Lyndhurst Foundation persuaded Stroud Watson, an architecture professor at the University of Tennessee, to develop a nonprofit urban-design center. Soon after, the foundation encouraged another group to run "Vision 2000", a series of public meetings where more than 1,700 people, black and white, rich and poor, were asked what they would like Chattanooga to be in 20 years. It was something entirely new to the town. People who were usually strangers or antagonists began to imagine together, and the experience taught them to work together.

The process revealed 40 goals and 223 projects that had strong community support. These ideas drove Chattanooga forward, and the city soon acquired a reputation for trying new things and doing them fast. Along the river, warehouses and rail yards were cleared to make a park that runs nearly the length of the city. A 100-year-old metal-truss bridge across the river was saved from demolition by private donations and converted into the world's longest pedestrian bridge, allowing tourists and customers to walk to businesses on both sides. Thanks to tough pollution controls, the city met federal clean-air standards by 1989; today, electric buses made by a local manufacturer run the length of downtown (without charge). (The buses have also been shipped to Los Angelos, Tampa, and Costa Rica.)

Chattanooga used government aid creatively, rebuilding the city by coordinating big construction projects with the Main Street management approach. A turning point came in 1992, when a $45 million freshwater aquarium opened on the riverfront near the pedestrian bridge. "At first, it seemed like an idea that had come from Mars. It was a hard sell," admits Stroud Watson, who now heads the Riverfront/Downtown Planning and Design Center. "It took years and years for the mayor, city council, and others to fashion the idea. But there was no question that we needed a catalyst, and this was a possible engine that could start the city." The aquarium now draws a million visitors a year.

The new Chattanooga is a stylish balance of the old and new. The city's minor-league baseball club opened a snazzy new park last spring near the aquarium, but their historic home, built in the 1920's, was saved and will be used by municipal and college teams. A new hotel, along with the first downtown residential development in years, has broken ground near one end of the pedestrian bridge. The energy extends far beyond the tourist zones, too. The city's affordable housing agency is one of the largest in the country; last year Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise made $31 million in loans, with 80 percent helping low-income people fix up their homes and 20 percent for small businesses and nonprofit groups. Unemployment in the city is now about 2.5 percent.

The public meeting of the 1980's changed the city's culture. Today, interest groups in Chattanooga are more likely to cooperate than see each other in court. Last year, for example, the local land trust signed a long-term lease with the Signal Mountain Cement Company. The company gets to continue operating a limestone quarry near downtown, in exchange for donating a mountain containing important plant habitats to the trust an agreeing to re-plant quarried areas. "This is the type of partnership we're all going to have to do in the future if we're going to save anything of the natural world," says James C. Brown of the Tennessee River Gorge Trust. Thanks in part to the agreement, Signal Mountain Cement invested $120 million in Chattanooga in 1999.

Chattanooga's slew of master plans, strategic plans, and vision statements continue to drive the region forward. The most ambitious plan yet is now being drafted with the assistance of Dr. Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School, who is well-known for helping corporations and governments find competitive advantages. Porter's team identified the six most important industrial clusters in the metropolitan area - for example, Chattanooga is the third-largest center in the United States for baking and candy-making - and now leaders from those industries are learning how to plan for their future together. "We're promoting cooperation between competitors," says Rich Bailey of the local Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors the study.

The community now has many reasons to celebrate. On the Saturday night after Thanksgiving, a parade of more than 40 lighted boats moved down the river. At 7:45 p.m., Santa threw sizzling rockets at downtown buildings, which "exploded" on contact with elaborate seasonal light displays (it's done with wires). Later this month, downtown will host an Appalachian Christmas hoe-down and a no-alcohol New Year's Eve party. More than 30,000 local people are expected to gather along the river to celebrate the hard work that made their dreams real.

CORNING, NY

Corning, New York, is dominated by Corning Glass, the inventor of Pyrex and the market leader in fiber-optic cable. The town's 12,000 homes and historic commercial district are spread along the steep walls of the Chemung River Valley, near the wineries and waterfalls of the Finger Lakes. Back in 1972, the city's Market Street area was in decline and the locals were debating urban renewal. Then a devastating flood coated the town with a thick layer of muck, left a snapping turtle in the appliance section of the local department store, and ended the discussion. Something had to be done.

In 1972, mainstream thinking would have torn down Corning's historic buildings. But Corning residents are anything but mainstream. Because of the major employer, the small village is home to a high concentration of artists and scientists; even during the Great Depression, it maintained a symphony, a chorus, and live theater. Corning reacted to the flood by forming a nonprofit group, hiring Norman Mintz, and setting him to work on their vision of a revitalized city. "We knew that we weren't looking at a five-year process, but a 25-year process," says Jack Benjamin, president of the local Three Rivers Foundation.

Norman Mintz is engaging, laughs easily, and loves to hang out on the street. He is a nationally known consultant to downtown projects, a trustee of the Preservation League of New York State, and co-author (with Roberta Brandes Gratz) of Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtowns (Wiley). But 25 years ago, he was a young idealist eager to use his college training in planning and design. At Columbia University, Mintz had studied the work of James Marston Fitch, Jane Jacobs, William H. Whyte, and others who emphasized the human side of urban planning. "I knew that I had to win the trust of people to be able to work with them," he says. "In those first few weeks, I bought a lot of stuff I didn't need just so I could start talking to people."

Mintz began by encouraging the merchants to paint, plant, and make the most of what they had. With few resources at his disposal, he learned how to give a little push to the right place at the right time. "The most important thing is to establish priorities and set attainable goals," he says. Many of the town's most beautiful buildings were obscured by cheap-looking plastic signs, for example. A foundation agreed to pay for removing them, and Mintz helped store owners come up with new ideas for marketing and design. "When the signs came down, people could see the beauty of the street," he says.

The Market Street Restoration Agency started something big in the mid-1970's, but Mintz says it didn't feel big in the mid-1970's, but Mintz says it didn't feel big at the time. Their first Christmas party, he says, started with "me, a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, decorating a 40-foot Christmas tree in the middle of a small town upstate. We closed off the street at 5 p.m. and brought in the middle of a small town upstate. We closed off the street at 5 p.m. and brought in carolers, hot chocolate, and lights, which looked beautiful in the falling snow. I ran a roast chestnut wagon, which no one up there had ever seen before. We didn't know what was going to happen. But by the end we had 5,000 people downtown."

Corning's Christmas celebrations now attract up to 40,000 people for three week-ends running. The festivities include a parade with floats draped in elaborate colored lights, such as a fire truck that turns it ladder into a 40-foot illuminated candy cane. On Market Street, Father Christmas holds court in a glass house erected just after Thanksgiving. Downtown may also be the best place in the country to shop for art glass: The standout galleries include the Vitrix Studio, where you can watch artist/owner Thomas Kelly work with molten glass and then buy his creations. Within walking distance is the newly renovated Corning Museum of Glass, where master artisans make and sell Steuben crystal. Things are so good downtown that when the main highway was shunted onto a by-pas several years ago, the city celebrated its loss of traffic and immediately expanded the pedestrian district.

Thanks to strong global demand for fiber-optic cable, Corning Inc.'s stock price has increased tenfold in the last two years. The company is now adding 700 full-time jobs to a plant just outside of town. Unlike most of upstate New York, Corning has a growing population and is planning for it; a community planning process is envisioning a fully developed valley and new construction in the hills. Back downtown, the Market Street Restoration Agency is assisting in the renovation of commercial buildings for houses and townhouses. "Downtown is good enough now that people want to live, work, and shop here," says architect Elise Johnson-Schmidt, who now heads the agency. "We want to make a 24-hour neighborhood."

PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA

The Main Street approach made a spectacular difference in Corning and Chattanooga. But there are hundreds of towns using it, and most of them have been improved in smaller ways. Panama City is the only pre-World War II downtown in Bay County, an area of the Florida Panhandle known for its beaches but dominated by vast, empty swamps and pine woods. Just 50 years ago, Panama City was a village of 5,000, located seven miles by boat from the beach. Most of the work for the local folk was at a small port or in one of several wood-pulp mills. Today the city has 35,000 people, but it also has two tough competitors. Across the bridge are the high-rises and seafood shacks of Panama City Beach, one of the capitals of spring break. To the north is a large enclosed shopping mall, which sucked department stores and shoppers away from downtown in the 1970's.

"Downtown lost the tourists and retailers," says Dave Jackson, executive director of the Panama City's Downtown Improvement Association (DIA). "We kept our government and professional jobs, but there are a lot of big empty spaces." When Florida began a statewide Main Street program in 1985, Panama City was among the first tot join. The city's strategy was to attract more professional workers and business services downtown, so the DIA began the now-familiar drill: developing design guidelines, planting trees, throwing parties, and writing all manner of studies, plans and reports.

The most important projects were in the dead center of town, facing each other across Harrison Avenue. One was the most impressive building in the city, the Martin Theater. A 1936 movie palace with a beautiful Art Deco facade, it went dark and began deteriorating in 1978. With assistance from the state, the tine DIA bought and renovated the Martin. It re-opened in 1991 as a venue for concerts and live productions as well as for movies, and has since expanded to include space for small conferences in an adjacent building.

Across the street from the Martin was an aging city hall/jail complex. With another grant, the DIA teamed up with the local art association to turn the buildings into gallery space and studios for artists. When the Visual Arts Center of Northwest Florida opened in 1988, it offered the only museum-quality exhibition space between Pensacola and Tallahassee. Now Panama City, the former pulp-mill town, has become a minor cultural center. The project received national recognition a few years later, when a guidebook named Panama City "one of America's 100 best small art towns."

Dave Jackson says that the task facing the DIA is "giving people a reason to come downtown to buy and build." Several pieces of bay-front property and downtown buildings remain vacant; the Association is now working to fill these spaces with offices, medium-density residential developments, and the restaurants and other services that go along. "We'll get the tourists and the shoppers back," he says. "We are the only place around where you can park and walk to a theater, an art museum, and main street shops. We're the alternative to sunburn."

CORONADO, CALIFORNIA

Main Street managers are even working to fix trouble in paradise. Coronado, California, is a town of 18,000 on the Pacific Ocean, with 28 miles of beaches, 18 public parks, and post-card-perfect weather. The island is famous for the rambling Hotel Del Coronado, designed in 1888 by Stanford White, and its economic health is assured by two nearby naval bases that house an additional 11,000 people. Directly across the bay is downtown San Diego, one of the most vibrant large cities in America. But even in Coronado, prosperity downtown didn't just happen.

Coronado was challenged in the 1970's when the opening of a toll bridge across the bay made it much easier for residents to get to big San Diego shopping centers. "The bridge devastated our commercial district," says Toni Gaylord, executive director of Coronado MainStreet, Ltd. Heavy commuter traffic soon began from the bridge to the military bases, and the once-placid village was forced to cope with busy boulevards that cut the town in half. Downtown buildings started falling into disrepair, and by 1980 more than one-third were vacant. The biggest problem was the turn-of-the-century Spreckels Building, a massive concrete Beaux Arts-style structure that stretches over two blocks in the center of town. It was a local landmark, but under absentee ownership was slowly becoming an eyesore.

The city signed on to the Main Street process in the late 1980's and, after exhaustive community meetings, completed a Business Area Development Plan in 1994. Then an angel arrived in the person of Paul Swerdlove, a developer and preservationist. Swerdlove, who saw a gem in the Spreckels Building, purchased it in a probate auction and committed $10 million to its restoration. "After the Spreckels project was announced, it was easier to get businesses to make improvements," says Gaylord. MainStreet, Ltd. added momentum in small but significant ways, assisting in the implementation of a new sign ordinance, adding white lights along the roofs of buildings on Orange Avenue, and lobbying for a law that made it easier for restaurants to allow outdoor dining. One of the most popular improvements was planting nine gardens in the wide, grass-covered medians of Orange Avenue. Donors of plants and labor were easy to find, says Gaylord, and the greenery continues to generate donations. "People now eat their lunch in the middle of the street," she says. "When the cafes started to set up outdoors, Main Street came to life," she says.

Coronado is now planning for a new library, middle school, city hall, and recreation complex on the bay, along with new sidewalks, lights and trees. It will take a while, says Gaylord, because people in town aren't shy about sharing their views. "Don't try anything until you've talked to everyone in town," she says. "It took us a couple of years to work out the front door of the library.

"It's gratifying to me that new families moving into town seem just as interested."

Coronado was honored earlier this year with the Great American Main Street Award, which is given annually by the National Trust for Historic Preservation for excellence in Main Street revitalization. Over 20 years, the Trust's Main Street Center has worked with over 1,500 communities. According to reports generated by the towns, over $10.9 billion has been re-invested in main streets and commercial districts across the country, creating 147,000 new jobs. Every dollar spent on community revitalization has generated more than $35 in new investment in downtown's, according to Stephanie Redman of the Main Street Center. But perhaps more important than the numbers is how Main Street managers have changed the way Americans think about downtown's. "Today, the image of Main Streets solid and wholesome," says Norman Mintz. "Main streets typify the goodness of America, of what America could be."