An idea was thrown at Jenna Keane on the heels of the success of Home Town with Ben and Erin Napier.
HGTV executives wanted more and asked about taking the idea of Home Town on the road. They asked Hometown Take Over co-creator, Keane to deliver. She told the story at the Ignite Leadership Summit last week.
“I sat down with Ben and Erin, and I interviewed them on the steps they took in Laurel, (Mississippi),” Keane said. “We tried to turn it into a manual for small towns.”
Key ideas and steps emerged.
“We wanted to find the people that are helping others in town,” Keane said. “How do we put some love and energy into them so they can continue to put into others.”
To help downtown areas, Keane said the plan was to help a store then move several stores down.
“It's not necessarily helping four stores in a row,” Keane said. “Now you've got a little bit of a walking path between those two stores, and then the middle fills out.”
Keane learned what Ben and Erin were doing in Laurel and they created a “manual” of lessons.
“We wanted to apply them to a new town,” Keane said.
Thousands of towns had applied to be the first in Home Town Takeover. Keane and her team visited several. After stumbling upon Wetumpka, the team knew they wanted to take it on.
“It had to be, it wasn't a fully broken town,” Keane said. “We met a lot of fully broken towns.
We needed to see a team of people that were working together and were there obstacles to overcome.”
The team’s desire to take on Wetumpka was solidified when they realized it aligned with a dream Keane previously had. In her dream, Keane saw the town would be on a river. She drove across the Bibb Graves Bridge into town to meet Shellie Phelps and Jenny Stubbs.
“The show that Jenny and Shellie put on for us, it started with donuts,” Keane said. “Then conveniently the mayor was in our path. Everyone offered a little help here and there.”
Keane said it was an easy decision to pick Wetumpka after a consultation with Ben and Erin.
The Big Fish House helped as well.
“It was a key factor for us,” Keane said. “It was about (Phelps), but that house was pivotal for us. It was a beacon. It represented so much and had that neat quirk of having been a movie house in the past.”
The new show presented challenges to Keane and the production company. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down so much. But with grit, hard work and determination, they pulled it together. Filming concluded in 2020 and the show aired in 2021. It was HGTV’s No. 1 show, but it was the No. 2 show overall at the time.
Keane believed Wetumpka spoke to people. It was the definition of the town she tries to find. Wetumpka had people and stories viewers could relate to.
“HGTV viewers love a diamond in the rough and assess how they would fix it,” Keane said. “We wanted to find a town with lessons other towns could use.”
Keane said the first season of Hometown Takeover and Wetumpka warmed viewers' hearts coming out of the pandemic. It was something new for Keane.
“We had so many people reach out to us and say, ‘I was by myself and had no one but I had these shows and I had companionship,’” Keane said. “So that's probably the thing I'm most proud of, is feeling like we've provided companionship to people, which I hadn't really realized how important that was.”
