EASTON - It was supposed to be a small store.

Easton's downtown was deserted, and city leaders reached out to Crayola in Forks Township in 1991 hoping the major international crayon maker would consider opening a store there.The store morphed into an interactive museum, which morphed into the Crayola Experience. The wildly popular attraction has had more than 5 million visitors since it opened as the Crayola Factory 20 years ago on July 16, 1996."I don't think they ever thought it would be that big," said Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr.When the idea was first floated based on a downtown redevelopment study, no one came to Easton. Greater Easton Development Partnership Executive Director Jared Mast was 15 years old at the time."We came downtown when I was a kid to use the bowling alley and the movie theater. Once those two things went away, there was a period when there wasn't a whole lot of reason to come down," Mast said.Cheeburger Cheeburger restaurant owner Frank Aversa said there's no way he would have opened a franchise in Easton 20 years ago."If you would have told me then that I'd open up a business in Easton, I'd say you were on the narcotics they're selling on the corner."One Crayola executive said the international leader in art supplies didn't hesitate to locate in Centre Square Easton despite the bleak economic picture."Crayola has had facilities in various parts of Easton for more than 110 years," said Vicky Lozano, the senior vice president and general manager of Crayola attractions and retail. "To us, whether it's downtown or Forks Township, it's all 'Easton' and Easton is our hometown."The one trailblazer before Crayola was the State Theatre, which underwent a multi-million-dollar makeover in 1990 and was among the first attractions to draw patrons downtown at night, the mayor said. But Crayola's impact was perhaps more profound because of the number of people it drew even from the beginning.More than a million visitors had come through by 1999, about three times as many as projected. That translated into sorely needed revenue for the city through its amusement tax and parking fees.Crayola showed that if they could make it, so could other businesses."It validated that people would come to downtown Easton if they right attractions were there," Mast said.A turning point was the decision by the city to pay a McDonald fast food restaurant $300,000 and buy out its lease so Crayola could expand. The new four-floor attraction was rebranded the Crayola Experience and took off.Aversa said he held off from opening Cheeburger Cheeburger until he knew Crayola wouldn't relocate to the suburbs."If they didn't do that, I would never have opened in Easton," Aversa said.As one of the only family restaurants downtown, his successes and failures are strongly tied to Crayola's"When Crayola is busy, we're busy. When Crayola is slow, we're slow," he said. "It's a large part of our business."The Crayola Experience proved so successful it prompted the launch of similar attractions at the Mall of America in Minnesota and in Orlando, Lozano said."Easton is where we first debuted our unique attractions and were able to see how kids and families interacted with the brand via those attractions," she said. "We learned and optimized from there, bringing those improvement and new ideas to Easton as well as our new locations."In the last five to 10 years, the city has seen an influx of dozens of restaurants. Hundreds of upscale apartments are being renovated in historic buildings and marketed to millennials and empty-nesters.Crayola is a big part of the city's turnaround, but it isn't the only part, according to the mayor.Lafayette College's decision to fund the Easton Ambassadors program is a huge help, the mayor said. The red-shirted ambassadors clean up litter, tend planters, greet tourists and answer their questions.The Greater Easton Development Partnership leveraged state grants into three of its programs: the Main Street Initiative, which executes events and festivals, the Easton Farmers Market, and the Easton Public Market, a much-anticipated year-round farmers market half a block from the Crayola Experience.All of these entities and programs work together to bolster the downtown's revitalization, the mayor said."Main Street, the ambassadors and the farmers market. You take away those three programs and you take Easton back 15 years," Panto said. "Take away Crayola and you take Easton back 20 years."Crayola has no plans to relocate, according to Lozano. The company won't rest on its laurels, either."We plan to introduce new attractions every year," she said. "We want to continue to evolve and improve. We want families to have new and exciting experiences when they visit, so they keep coming back and having fun."The mayor would love to see another major draw downtown, preferably something that appeals to young adults since Crayola has the younger children covered. That would give the downtown a great one-two punch that could keep visitors occupied all day."We're looking for something to be the next attraction to Easton," he said.