Danielle Bowman

Through a business course a Merrimack, Danielle got the opportunity to help revitalize the downtown area of North Andover – an area she is very familiar with.

By creating a business plan, Danielle - alongside a team of business students - worked with the North Andover town planner to create an improvement strategy. After surveying town businesses and conducting research, they were able to make both simple and involved improvement suggestions such as addressing the parking issue, adding more outside lighting, or even making the town Web site more accessible.

As an aspiring accountant, Danielle worked the financial portion of the project, which turned out to be an eye opening experience for her. “I realized how much effort goes into a project like this – the planning, money, logistics – even something as small as adding window boxes to the outside of stores is a huge undertaking. The most difficult part was actually gathering the info and scheduling meetings.”

Upon completion of the business plan, the team presented their findings to representatives of the town of North Andover and some of their ideas might be implemented by the town.

“I think revitalizing the downtown area will give not only the citizens of North Andover more of a reason to go down there, but will also make it more well known to people who live outside of the town,” said Danielle. “It would be nice for downtown to reflect the town as a whole.