‘Home Town Kickstart’ kicks smalltown revitalization into high gear
Champions of small-town living in series such as “Home Town” and “Home Town Takeover,” Ben and Erin Napier take their mission to revitalize small communities to the next level in an offering upcoming on HGTV.
In “Home Town Kickstart,” premiering Sunday, April 24, the home renovation experts turn their attentions to six small towns in need of a boost across the U.S., joined by HGTV pros. So in the six hourlong episodes, the Laurel, Miss., couple will oversee revitalization efforts in Buffalo, Wyo., Cornwall, N.Y., Winslow, Ariz., Lagrange, Ky., Thomaston, Ga., and Minden, La.
There are three areas of focus: refresh the home of a local hero, reinvigorate a public space and give an upgrade to a small business. HGTV experts spearheading the efforts on the ground include Jasmine Roth, Ty Pennington, Jeremy Brent,
Nate Jeremiah and Alison Victoria.
Sunday’s opener touches down in Buffalo, a town nestled in a scenic valley in the Big Horn Mountains, where Roth and Pennington teamed up to fix up the home of a military veteran and single mom, help new owners give life to an old movie theater and create a mural to draw tourists off a main thoroughfare to Yellowstone National Park and into downtown.
Roth, who herself hails from a small town in Virginia, was immediately struck by Buffalo’s natural beauty. But soon, she and Pennington found themselves charmed by the town itself.
“It was evident immediately that there was a pride of Buffalo,” she says, “because there were shops and restaurants and people out and about chatting with each other . ... There was a sense of community immediately and I think that’s the thing that caught Ty and I by surprise. It was like, ‘Wow, they’ve got something going on here.’ ”