Just in time for the new year, Mount Airy officials have unveiled a revamped city government website that in addition to serving local citizens is aimed at drawing more visitors and potential new residents to town.
“We think this is a way we are going to be able to promote Mount Airy,” Assistant City Manager Darren Lewis said during the last council meeting earlier this month. “This is just another way we can highlight the city and all the great things we have to offer.”
Both Lewis and City Manager Stan Farmer made a presentation then on the new website — at https://www.mountairy.org/ — which both have been working on for months in addition to their other responsibilities.
“It means a lot to me because this was one of the first projects I identified when I got here on Jan. 31,” said Farmer, who came to Mount Airy from a position in Texas.
“We’re both very excited that this has come to fruition,” he added regarding the effort involving him and Lewis. “It has taken quite a while to get this done.”
“I think it’s a little more user-friendly than what we had,” said Lewis.
The new online presence that has resulted contains the same basic City Hall information as before about utility services, the various municipal departments, employment opportunities with the city, records of commissioner meetings and other resources to engage citizens.
But the rejuvenated website, which went live in recent weeks, is much more visually stunning, including the presence of its most noteworthy addition: short video segments that can be accessed on it which are professionally narrated and contain music.
This includes an introductory, or welcoming, video that provides a general overview of various sites of interest in the community, which the city manager says is just a way to provide “a feel” of the place.
“I think we got all the highlights of everything in Mount Airy in three minutes there,” Farmer said.
Other short video segments highlight the Mount Airy Tourism Development Authority featuring comments by its executive director, Jessica Roberts; Mount Airy City Schools, with Superintendent Dr. Kim Morrison making an on-camera appearance; Main Street Coordinator Lizzie Morrison commenting on what downtown Mount Airy has to offer; and Northern Regional Hospital President and CEO Chris Lumsden speaking about that facility’s services.
Of course, the new website devotes much exposure to local Mayberry connections with Andy Griffith in addition to concerts and other events presented by the Surry Arts Council, local industrial parks and Mount Airy’s recreational resources including its greenway system.
The fabled white granite produced here is a further highlight along with the local fiddlers convention and Mount Airy’s proximity to nearby attractions such as the Blue Ridge Parkway, Pilot Mountain State Park and Yadkin Valley wine region.
At one point, the video narrator touts Mount Airy as “America’s greatest small town” and declares that “it just feels like home.”
There also are links to community organizations such as the United Fund of Surry and its 26 member agencies that meet various crisis, medical and other needs, and links to local commercial entities listed as sponsors.
“So it’s a way that we can promote our local businesses,” Lewis said.
“Lot of moving parts”
The new city government website bears a tagline with the words “Mayberry, mountains, music and Merlot,” which Farmer believes summarizes what the local area is all about.
“There’s a lot of moving parts to this,” Farmer said of what it took to develop the new website.
It involved the work of two videography companies, one that provided its services to the city for free, according to Farmer.
He dealt with an entity from Dallas to produce the three-minute welcoming video.
“Darren was the one who took the lead on this, almost daily,” Farmer said of Lewis.
“We both drove around with the videographers,” the city manager related, which sometimes consisted of rushing from Snappy Lunch to the greenway and then some other location.
The task additionally required sifting through hundreds of still photographs to find ones that appear on the website on a rotating basis, including scenes from a concert at Blackmon Amphitheatre, a picture from the greenway and more.
City officials worked with CivicPlus, a web development business that handles Mount Airy’s online site, in order to incorporate the new elements — “to change out information and make the look different,” Farmer said.
“A lot of technical things can go wrong,” the city manager said when so many facets are juggled to achieve a finished product.
“But we really like the look of the new page.”
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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