Manchester DDA hires director
Dana Queen, the newly hired DDA director at the last farmers market of the season, Sunday, September 27, 2026. Photo credit: Sara Swanson.
by Sara Swanson
The City of Manchester announced last week that Dana Queen has been hired as the new director for the Downtown Development Authority (DDA), a 20 hour per week position with regular office hours to be announced soon. Queen currently serves as the Manchester Farmers Market manager.
Michael Sessions, City of Manchester manager stated that Queen was hired for the dual purpose of stewarding the DDA to achieve an Associate Level status in the Michigan Main Street Program and allowing the DDA to take a more active approach to downtown development including providing support to downtown business, creating new downtown events, and pursuing other initiatives beyond the Michigan Main Street program that will encourage continued investment in and development downtown.
Christine Eleby, the Manchester DDA chairperson explained that the Michigan Main Street program is designed to re-energize traditional downtown districts by blending economic development with historic preservation and that for Manchester, participating in this program would give us access to expert planning, technical support, marketing services, and grant opportunities that we don’t already have access to.
Queen’s background in Farmer’s Market management is a huge plus for Eleby. She stated “For those that don’t know, that includes working with small businesses, municipalities, license applications, grant applications, project management, event management, social media marketing, traditional marketing, fund raising, and more. We see a lot of skills that Dana will bring to the DDA Director position which will help continue to improve Manchester downtown businesses, events, and opportunities for the future.”
Queen, agrees that the the DDA director position requires a lot of the same skills as the farmers market position, just on a larger scale. And if anyone is worried that the Farmers Market is losing Queen, she adds that she will be continuing in her role as Farmers Market manager.
Since being hired officially last Monday, she has met with most of the business owners downtown and has been through almost all of the old DDA meeting minutes and agendas. She also stated that the city manager and city staff incredibly supportive and welcoming.
As far as new events downtown, Queen states that she is putting an effort toward bringing more fun stuff to the downtown right from the beginning but things probably won’t be at full speed until into next year. She added that she also will be helping in anyway she can with already existing events organized by downtown business. The first event she is undertaking is to coordinate decorating the downtown with scarecrows for the month of October and turn it into a contest with a prize.
Saline has already achieved associate level status in the Michigan Main Street Program and Queen has a pre-existing relationship with Saline’s coordinator of the program, Mary Detling. Queen served for years as the manager of the Saline Farmers Market and worked with Detling in that capacity. In addition to meeting with Dettling, Queen and Sessions have a meeting scheduled with the head of Main Street America. .
Questions? Dana Queen can be reached at dqueen@city-manchester.org.
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