Revisioning Main Street

Within East Toledo, Main Street sits as an architecturally historic artery with potential to attract more people and businesses with an updated streetscape design.

Key Findings & Challenges

The TDC and Arts Commission worked together to create a vision for Main Street within East Toledo. While the majority of storefronts are vacant along Main Street, there is great potential to fill them, as the buildings are still viable and retain their architectural characteristics. After a series of community meetings of what the neighborhood would like to see along Main Street much of the main concerns were simply about the lack of people on the street and the underutilized sidewalk bump-outs with no real streetscape plan.

Solutions

The TDC took the ideas from the community meetings and created quick sketches of how to better use the bump-outs with flowers or tactile urban design. Placing even non-permanent structures like street furniture and sculptures can have large differences in who people are utilizing the streets and sidewalks. These sketches are just examples of a phase one—designs that would only take a couple of weeks to implement, but would still make a difference. Phase one could then become larger design implementation strategies like planting street trees and pop-up storefront in the currently vacant buildings.