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Westville has its own ​“downtown“ — and, as of Tuesday, an official ​“Main Street” title.

The official designation came at a ceremony inside Whalley Avenue’s Kehler Liddel gallery, one of the hubs of the neighborhood’s — or ​“village”‘s — revived commercial core. John Simone (at left in photo), president of an outfit called the Connecticut Main Street Center (CMSC), declared Westville a ​“Connecticut Main Street Community.”

That doesn’t mean Whalley Avenue will be renamed ​“Main Street.”

It means a team of national experts will come to town to study the commercial district and help neighbors plan its future growth; hire the right full-time executive director for the Westville Renaissance Alliance (WVRA); and link the group with more expertise and investment. CMSC offers all that when it designates a commercial downtown a ​“Main Street.” The not-for-profit group is dedicated to ​“bringing Connecticut’s downtown commercial districts back to life.”

The designation was a tribute in part to the boundless energy a growing core of volunteers, like store owner and WVRA President Gabriel DaSilva (at center in photo), have poured into the neighborhood the past few years. ​“Renaissance” isn’t marketing-speak; it describes a true flowering of volunteerism and cultural vitality. ​“Downtown” Westville has exploded with ArtWalks, Edgewood Park clean-ups, gallery openings and musical events, Sunday farmers markets, flower-planting, distinctive new businesses, an artists housing complex, not to mention informal organizing brunches at coffee shops and organizing against threats to quality of life.

Tuesday’s designation was also a tribute to Westville politicians who fought for government support for the district’s growth, chief among them State Rep. Pat Dillon (at right in photo) and State Sen. Toni Harp. Dillon championed Westville neighbors’ push for $80,000 in state money for a paid WVRA executive director, part of a $120,000 annual budget the group had to raise to qualify as a ​“Main Street Community.”

“This gives us a chance to move beyond the volunteer model and be more sophisticated” in developing the commercial district, Dillon said.

Toni Harp (at right in photo) spoke of how Dillon was relentless at the Capitol in making sure that she and other leaders didn’t let Westville’s money drop out of the budget at the last minute, the way other projects often die disheartening deaths.

“Every five minutes during the budget process she would say, ​‘Is it in? Is it in?’ She never took it for granted,” Harp said.

A prime mover behind the Westville ​“downtown” renaissance has been Thea Buxbaum, currently WVRA​’s interime director. She and her husband, the sculptor Gar Waterman, converted an old factory building on West Rock Avenue into a living space and studio. More studies followed on their block; then a riverfront walkway behind their block; then West Rock Avenue’s ArLoW studios, apartments and storefronts on the other side of Whalley; with a whole lot of neighborhood organizing in between.

“We’re not homogenized,” Buxbaum said of the neighborhood, during Tuesday’s mid-day event. ​“We’re retailers who know each other. We’re property owners who reinvest.”

Buxbaum and other speakers made their comments beside two ​“lost rabbits” painted by Laurie Grace. Grace’s work is part of a three-artist critter-themed show at Kehler-Liddel. Her work shares the walls with the photos of Gale Zucker and paintings of Julie Frankel — the latest contribution to the Westville ​“downtown” scene.