Cultural Plan

The Town of North Hempstead Cultural Master Plan was adopted by the Town Board on November 19, 2020 as a roadmap to foster diversity, equity, and inclusivity, while creating strong and vibrant local economies within the Town. The Plan involved twenty months of focus groups, surveys, public meetings, and discussions with civic associations, chambers of commerce, Business Improvement Districts, arts & culture organizations, and historical societies as a collaborative effort to: 

• • Create an initial Office of Commerce and Culture that brings together the Town, interested villages, local BIDs, Chamber of Commerce bodies, arts and cultural non-profits, and other stakeholders within North Hempstead;
• • Develop a marketing strategy that aims to include a more dynamic online tool for branding, promoting and incentivizing the arts, culture, tourism, dining and retail experience to help thread together and cross-pollinate activities/events Town-wide;
• • Cultivate a program to be nurtured over time that decreases retail vacancies (via temporary pop-up businesses); improves the physical shopping, dining and festival experiences by more directly involving the arts, cultural and historical sectors; and adds to vibrancy and quality-of-life enhancement in our downtowns (most importantly for our own residents, but also for those who may come to visit and spend their time and money in North Hempstead); and
• • Implement Plan recommendations while being sensitive to the conditions presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need to work toward addressing both local business and arts & culture organizational challenges in the contexts of economic rebuilding, operational challenges and public health recovery/safety.

The Cultural Plan is one of the first of its kind adopted by a major municipality in New York State, and may be viewed in its entirety here. It informs decisions and actions taken by the Town and the Business and Tourism Development Corporation.