Priced against the 30-day Squarespace scope as provided. Three options, so the work can be matched to whichever grant allocation comes through.
| Option | Hours | Standard | City AI partner rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| A — Full scope as written | 130–140 | $11,000 – $13,500 | $5,500 – $6,800 |
| B — 30-day phased buildRecommended | 85–95 | $7,200 – $9,500 | $3,600 – $4,800 |
| C — Grant-tier core | 55–65 | $4,700 – $6,200 | $2,400 – $3,100 |
Hours are the real estimate and are not reduced. The City AI partner rate reflects a 50% reduction in labor cost, explained below. Annual recurring cost lands at $290–470 in all three options, inside the stated $500 ceiling.
Talladega Main Street is the first production deployment of City AI, Cobblestone Digital's downtown assistant platform. In exchange for serving as the founding reference deployment — a live installation we can demonstrate and cite with other communities — labor on this build is offered at half our standard community-nonprofit rate, and the City AI integration is included at no charge.
The scope, the hours, and the standard rate above are stated in full so the value of the arrangement is clear to the board and to any grant reviewer.
Every template in the brief, built and populated, within 30 days.
| Setup, design system, global header and footer, responsive foundation | 16–18 |
| Homepage — hero, impact counter, four-pillar cards, video block, event feed, champions | 15–16 |
| About Us & Community Champions | 10 |
| Discover Downtown — map, filterable directory, two card formats, population | 24–28 |
| Community Calendar | 9–10 |
| Available Properties & Reimagine Downtown | 13 |
| Then & Now Walking Tour (shell) | 7 |
| Get Involved and three intake forms | 8–9 |
| Content entry, QA, accessibility, handoff, two review rounds, project management | 27–31 |
| Total | 130–140 |
The largest single line is the Discover Downtown directory. Squarespace has no native filtering that does what the brief describes, so it requires a custom filter layer built over a collection. Populating merchant records is a separate cost from building what displays them, and scales with how complete the source list is.
Same 30-day window, same eight templates present in the navigation. Three ship as designed shells rather than populated pages.
This is the recommendation because the three deferred pages are the three the brief itself flags as unresolved. Available Properties needs listings that don't exist yet. Reimagine Downtown needs concept renderings that haven't been commissioned. The walking tour has four possible formats and no decision between them. Building polished shells now means the structure is ready the moment content exists, rather than paying to build pages that sit empty.
Five pages: Home, About, Discover Downtown, Calendar, Get Involved. Native Squarespace blocks throughout, no custom filter layer, static impact figures rather than an animated counter, one review round.
A complete and professional site. It does less than the brief describes.
Available on top of any option, or later as budget allows. City AI partner rate applies to all.
| Custom filterable directory (upgrade from native tag filtering) | $250 – $350 |
| Available Properties, built and populated | $300 – $425 |
| Reimagine Downtown vision showcase | $250 – $350 |
| Then & Now walking tour, built out | $350 – $550 |
| Additional merchant records beyond the first 40, each | $15 – $25 |
| DNS with SPF, DKIM and DMARC for verified email sending | $125 – $225 |
| City AI downtown assistant — embed, styling, knowledge load | Included |
| Line item | Per year |
|---|---|
| Squarespace Business plan | $276 – $348 |
| Domain renewal | $11 – $20 |
| Email newsletter platform | $0 on free tier |
| Impact counter embed | $0 – $100 |
| Map services | $0 |
| Total | $290 – $470 |
Inside the $500 ceiling, with one qualification covered below.
The native Squarespace signup block collects addresses at no cost, but sending to that list requires Squarespace Email Campaigns, a separate paid add-on running roughly $84–300 per year depending on volume. Routing the same signup block to a free MailerLite or Mailchimp tier costs nothing until the list passes several hundred subscribers. This changes how the form is wired, so it's worth deciding before build rather than after.
It requires a code block or a third-party embed. The brief notes a possible existing embed link — worth locating, since a paid widget subscription would take a meaningful share of the annual budget when the same result is achievable with a code block at no recurring cost.
The brief floats a pamphlet, a map, video, and audio without settling between them. This is the feature where a downtown AI assistant is a stronger answer than any of those: a numbered route where visitors ask what they're looking at and get a real answer, rather than a PDF they have to carry. Worth discussing separately rather than guessing at inside this scope.
The 30-day window is achievable. It depends on content arriving, not on build capacity. The following are needed by day 7:
District photography, supplied as files rather than a shared album link
Vector logo and Main Street Alabama brand kit
The three impact figures — reinvestment, facade projects, volunteer hours
Board and staff roster with photographs and biographies
Merchant list with categories, addresses, hours, and Featured versus Standard designation
Writing the day-7 content deadline into the agreement protects both sides. It is the single most common reason a 30-day build becomes a 60-day build, and naming it up front is easier than renegotiating a timeline later.
The supplied palette and type specification was reviewed against the logo file. Three findings, offered as recommendations rather than changes already made.
The specified terracotta sits very close to the logo's crimson on the same light background, which reads as a near-miss rather than a deliberate pairing. Using the wordmark crimson for buttons resolves it and ties the calls to action back to the brand.
The gold measures 2.38:1 against the alabaster canvas, below the accessibility threshold for readable text. It works well for borders, rules, and dividers. Category badges and eyebrow labels would be better set in the forest green or crimson.
The mark contains four colored quadrants and the brief calls for four Main Street Point cards. Color-coding those cards to the quadrants gives the palette a reason to exist and strengthens the connection to the national brand. Worth confirming any official color assignment with Main Street Alabama first.
The warm alabaster canvas, deep forest green, charcoal body text, and light header bar in the original specification are all sound and are carried through every direction.
