NATCHEZ — After a day and a half stuck in a room together, approximately 30 area leaders produced some specific plans to do — and not just talk — about a 20-year vision for Natchez and Adams County.

Public and private people teamed up Wednesday and Thursday for a workshop hosted at Alcorn State University’s Natchez campus with different agendas but the same goal: to help the community reach its potential.

One idea that sprouted from the workshop’s city planning task force focused on polishing up the first impressions visitors get on the drive to and from Natchez.

The group pledged to create a corridor association by the end of this year for all those stakeholders and business owners whose storefronts line the highway and street entrances and exits to downtown Natchez.

“Implementation is the key,” said Chance McDavid, project manager at the John C. Stennis Institute of Government and Community Development, who oversaw the workshop. “And the challenge is sustainability.”

McDavid and his colleague, project director Joseph Fratesi, were asked to direct the workshop.

McDavid said assigning individual tasks and deadlines is the key to holding community visionaries accountable for creating their vision.

The workshop was a spin-off of a statewide workshop Mississippi State University sponsored, in which local community members attended this year and last.

Five groups, organization development, tourism, planning and design, economic development and education, emerged at the workshop, which focused on specific areas that will eventually all feed off of each other.

City Engineer David Gardner said the organization and development task force planned to emphasize and use the existing Community Alliance to work as the glue to hold the task forces together.

“There’s got to be some accountability,” Gardner said to his group gathered around a table.

Marsha Colson, who worked with the tourism task force, said the workshop’s focus on specific goals and objectives made it effective.

“I’ve been to a lot of workshops, and I come back with great information,” she said. “But when I get back to the office nothing happens.”

McDavid and Fratesi said when people in leadership roles fail to follow through on big ideas, it’s not that they do not care, but that they have busy lives and jobs. Creating specific tasks and deadlines helps action apply to those ideas, they said.

Colson said participating in the workshop, with approximately 30 leaders who care about the future of Natchez-Adams County, was uplifting.

“The overall positive attitude and enthusiasm of the group is very exciting,” Colson said.

The Mississippi State University Community Action Team and Mississippi Development Authority have already identified those good and challenging qualities of Natchez based on First Impressions — a study conducted by outside visitors several years ago.

Colson said while Natchez-Adams County might have given the impression in the past of bickering among its different groups of leaders, the workshop is an example of the entire community moving forward together.

“I think we’re maturing,” Colson said. “That’s funny to say of a community that’s 300 years old, but I think we (now) see the big picture.”