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Kinston City Manager Tony Sears fully comprehends and appreciates the value of Main Street designation and the prestige it brings to downtown and the overall community. When the Kinston organization went on life support during 2016-2017, Tony rescued it by bringing it under the City’s umbrella to ensure its stability and sustainability. He gave a new Main Street manager free rein to reinvent, rebrand, and reorganize the organization, directing him to “make stuff happen.” But his most heroic accomplishment was his masterful ability to turn a fantasy into a reality. Thanks to Tony’s endless number crunching and attendance at tedious community meetings, the long-awaited, $3.2M streetscape redesign of nine blocks of Queen Street that will occur in 2019 will catalyze the transformative evolution of downtown Kinston. Tony Sears is a North Carolina Main Street Champion.