Nearly two months have passed since Matt Haynes resigned as Main Street Vero Beach’s executive director – a position he said he left because he became frustrated with a “complete misalignment of vision and goals” between him and the nonprofit’s board.
It wasn’t until last weekend, however, that Main Street Vero President Joe Coakley publicly acknowledged that Haynes was asked to step down from his $45,000-per-year job amid damaged relationships with downtown business owners the organization needed as members.
To replace Haynes, Coakley said Main Street Vero Beach had rehired Haynes’ predecessor, Susan Gromis, who served as the organization’s executive director from 2019 through 2022.
She will share the position with her husband, Richard.
Haynes, an island resident hired in January 2023, submitted his resignation in June, agreeing with Coakley that his differences with the board could not be resolved.
Not that he had a choice.
“We can do everything humanly possible to make downtown a wonderful place, but if the merchants are getting upset with our executive director, we have no place to go,” Coakley said in a phone interview Sunday. “So we talked about it as a board, and we came to a decision.”
The board members decided Haynes wasn’t the right fit.
Coakley said the board had been receiving complaints from downtown business owners who increasingly became put off by Haynes’ attitude, which at times was condescending.
“If he didn’t like the way you were thinking,” Coakley said, “he could get a little angry with you.”
Haynes attributed much of the animosity to his decision last year to experiment with occasionally moving the 14th Avenue site of Main Street’s wildly popular Downtown Friday events to south of State Road 60.
The festive community gatherings – from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on the last Friday of each month, though they have been paused for the summer – were previously held only north of State Road 60.
“I did it once last summer and once this June at the request of the business owners for fair treatment, so it was only twice in 18 months,” Haynes said, adding that the board approved the move. “Some of the business owners loved it, and some hated it. For me, it was one of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situations.
“My long-term vision was for Downtown Friday to run from Taco Dive to the Heritage Center,” he continued, referring to the stretch of 14th Avenue from 19th Street to Pocahontas Park. “You could have two bands and make everybody happy.”
Haynes conceded that he could be pushy when trying to get things done downtown, saying, “I’m not an angry person, but my attitude is: Lead, follow or get out of the way.”
And Haynes was trying to lead.
Almost immediately after taking the job, Haynes said, he realized that the organization was not doing nearly enough to accomplish the mission established by Main Street America and Florida Main Street, umbrella organizations that focus on revitalizing downtowns by promoting economic development and encouraging historic preservation.
He believed Main Street Vero Beach should strive to do more than merely organize and promote community events, such as the Downtown Friday and Coffee-with-the-Mayor gatherings.
He wanted Main Street Vero to aspire to a more-expanded role – similar to those championed by Main Street groups in other parts of Florida, including Melbourne and Fort Pierce – and become more involved in the city’s marketing efforts for the downtown area.
But MSVB board members, Haynes said, offered little support, preferring to devote its energies to community events that attract people to the downtown business district but raise little money for the organization.
Haynes graduated magna cum laude from Babson College with a master’s degree in marketing. He served as president of IGEL Technology America, a Fort Lauderdale subsidiary of a billion-dollar German firm, then as senior director of worldwide sales strategies and field marketing for Citrix Systems.
He then moved on to Microsoft as a director of business strategy for corporate cloud service accounts in Redmond, Washington for for eight years, then to Fortune 500 company Insight Enterprises as director of strategic alliances in Seattle before moving to Vero Beach in 2022.
He said Main Street Vero Beach provided few resources, even less funding and no meaningful help, describing himself as a “one-man band” tasked with everything from organizing events to promoting the organization in the downtown community to raising money.
“When I accepted the position, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but I quickly realized we needed to align with Florida Main Street, which has a playbook – a template for how to get grants to help cities revitalize their downtown areas,” Haynes said.
“But the board members here don’t understand what the Main Street movement is, or what Main Street Vero Beach can be,” he added. “They want to run it like a Rotary club. They just want to do events, like Downtown Friday.
“That’s not what downtown needs, especially if you look at what’s in the city’s downtown master plan.”
According to Florida Main Street’s website: A revitalized downtown creates jobs, stabilizes and improves cities’ tax base, preserves historic buildings and grows civic pride by providing a gathering place where residents can socialize, form new partnerships and celebrate their communities.
Many of Florida Main Street’s 55 member organizations are directly affiliated with, or are funded by, their city governments. MSVB isn’t, and Haynes believes it should be.
He said the city needs some entity or person to actively promote the downtown area and engage with potential investors by providing tours, introductions and even informational packets.
If MSVB won’t step up and become the city’s marketing agent, especially for its downtown district, Haynes said he’s willing to – either as a municipal employee or on a contract basis.
“Right now, there’s no process for this,” Haynes said. “It’s all happenstance. That needs to change. We’ve got Main Street Vero Beach, the county Chamber of Commerce, the Vero Beach Chamber of Commerce, the Rotaries and Kiwanis clubs … We need someone to pull all these resources together.”
Haynes said he “pivoted” after leaving MSVB and has presented City Council members with a marketing proposal that aligns with the city’s vision for downtown revitalization and was, at least initially, well-received.
Vero Beach Mayor John Cotugno confirmed Haynes’ efforts, saying the council plans to “work on a strategic plan to move the city forward” after the November election.
“We’re going to look at where we might need to beef up our staffing, and we’re aware of what Matt is proposing,” Cotugno said. “If we decide to do something from a marketing and promotions perspective, we’ll take a closer look at it.”
Prior to Gromis’ previous three years in the post, Main Street Vero had a string of executive directors with quite short tenures.
As for parting with Haynes, Coakley said he was disappointed the hire didn’t work out.
“I explained to him from the outset what I thought we should be doing,” Coakley said, referring to Haynes. “As time went on, some things were getting done, and some things were not getting done.
“I understand why he said what he said, but he wanted to take Main Street in a totally different direction,” he added. “Maybe you can do that if you’ve got the merchants on board, but that wasn’t the case.”
Haynes agreed the break-up was inevitable, saying, “We needed to move on,” though he was quick to add:
“I’m proud of my year-and-a-half there. I enjoyed everything I did and met a lot of great people. But they just want to run Downtown Friday, and I told them coming in that was not why I accepted the job. In the end, it’s just a disagreement over direction.”