Historic Cocoa Village Main Street

Historic Cocoa Village Main Street, commonly known by its acronym HCVMS, is the nonprofit organization responsible for the ongoing preservation and promotion of Cocoa’s historic downtown district. Headquartered at 434 Delannoy Avenue, the same address as the historic Porcher House, the organization operates as a nonprofit affiliate of both Main Street America and Florida Main Street, national and statewide programs that support preservation based economic development in historic commercial districts.

The organization’s mission centers on maintaining Cocoa Village as what it describes as a vital, inviting commercial district built through preservation based economic development, a mission it pursues through four standing committees focused on design, organization, promotion, and economic vitality, mirroring the standard four point Main Street America framework used by historic downtown organizations across the country. In practice, this work includes coordinating the district’s public events, supporting the historic preservation standards that keep Cocoa Village’s early twentieth century storefronts intact, and promoting the several dozen independent shops, restaurants, and galleries that make up the district today.

HCVMS is the successor to what was previously known as the Historic Cocoa Village Association, an earlier nonprofit business league that filled a similar role for the district for years before reorganizing under the current Main Street America affiliated structure and name. Nonprofit filing records show that earlier organization’s recognized tax exempt status had lapsed in the years before this reorganization, and Historic Cocoa Village Main Street now operates as the district’s current recognized preservation and promotion nonprofit under its own filings.

Because Historic Cocoa Village Main Street functions as a preservation and promotion organization rather than a museum or gallery with its own exhibits, visitors will not find a walk in attraction at its Delannoy Avenue address in the way they would at the Playhouse or the Brevard Museum. Instead, the organization’s impact is visible throughout the district itself, in the maintained facades, coordinated streetscape, and calendar of public events that give Cocoa Village its identity as one of the more successful small downtown redevelopment and preservation efforts in this part of Florida.

The city’s own promotional materials point to Historic Cocoa Village as one of its most successful downtown beautification projects, work carried out in significant part through this organization’s ongoing preservation based economic development mission. HCVMS also maintains the visitor facing directory and events calendar for the district, giving residents and tourists a single source for the shops, restaurants, and cultural venues, including the galleries, framing shops, museums, and the Playhouse, that make up Cocoa’s arts and culture landscape today.

For anyone researching how Cocoa Village has maintained its historic character while remaining a functioning commercial district, rather than becoming either a purely residential neighborhood or an over commercialized tourist strip, Historic Cocoa Village Main Street is the organization behind much of that balancing act.