Berlin Live, Work, Play

A Great Place to Live, Work & Play

LIFE IN BERLIN

People love living in Berlin.

Downtown Berlin is relaxed, welcoming, helpful, clean, friendly, safe, caring, beautiful and alive. A place where you feel comfortable, a place where you can chat with the mayor on the porch of the Atlantic Hotel and let your children ride their bikes without worrying.

We have one of the best high schools in the state, the hospital is here in Berlin and Assateague Beach and Ocean City are only 7 miles away. Berlin is such a great place to live that kids going off to college actually return here to fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams.

People love living in a vibrant downtown where there’s always something going on.

Downtown Berlin prides itself on being a walkable/bike able community.

Those who live here have access to public bus transportation, but everything is so close, you can walk or bike to the local grocery stores, banks, farmers markets, butcher shop, dry cleaners, yoga studios, salons and more.

Our hospital is within 2 miles and construction on the new Berlin Library on Main Street has started. We are also only 7 miles to Assateague Beach and Ocean City and 20 miles to the nearest major airport in Salisbury.

Our downtown Main Street District is ADA Compliant with centralized free parking.

WORK IN BERLIN

Most of the business owners and their employees actually live in town. Since we started following the Main Street approach, the popularity of the Town has grown.

Millennials, who went to college elsewhere, are now returning to open their own businesses. This was not the case twenty years ago.

This is not a commuter town. Most of the people that work here, live here.

Our shops are very animal friendly. Dee Gilbert, who owns a boutique called NEST, brings her elderly Chihuahua, Petey, to work every day. Repeat visitors come to see how Petey is doing every year. He’s the ‘unofficial’ town dog.

Each business complements the other and help promote each other.

Since becoming a Main Street Community there has been $1,933,570 private dollars invested in our downtown. Public investment is at $1,097,720

We have added 255 jobs and 91 new businesses have opened. In our downtown area alone there are close to 2,000 employees. This does not include the hospital or doctor’s offices within a 2 mile radius.

One of the incentives we offer to our downtown businesses is a Façade Improvement Matching Grant. The grant offers the business and/or property owner 50% of what they spend on the improvement of their facades for up to $10,000. Nearly every building downtown has taken advantage of this grant and what a difference it has made.

Thinking about opening a business? A representative from the Small Business Development Center to be onsite once a week to offer assistance with financial advice and information about business development classes to local business owners, free of charge.

We have many service businesses assisting our downtown workforce including printers, banks, doctors’ offices, accountants, dry cleaners and several restaurants offer meeting spaces.

PLAY IN BERLIN

Berlin has over 40 events per year!

The 3 day long Fiddlers Convention brings thousands to watch musicians compete for the best bluegrass and fiddlers on the East Coast.

The Bathtub Races have been entertaining folks for over 30 years. You sit in a bathtub of your design, fill it with water, add wheels and then while someone sits in it another pushes you as fast as they can to the finish line.

Reggae Playday features local bands performing original music.

There’s concerts on the lawn, movies on Main Street, a New Year’s Eve Ball Drop and during the holidays we host the largest Christmas Parade on the Eastern Shore featuring 85 floats.

Other events include Vintage Car shows, Oktoberfest and a New Year’s Eve Ball Drop.

Coolest Small Town in America