Six storefronts, six owners: Main Street fills back in
A small grant program and a change to the vacancy rules brought a block back to life in under a year.
A year ago the 400 block of Main Street had one open business. Today it has seven.
The turnaround came from an unglamorous pair of policy changes: a facade grant capped at $12,000 and a vacancy fee that made sitting on empty retail expensive.
Owners say the hardest part was not the money but the permitting timeline, which the city has since cut from fourteen weeks to five.
