Back from the dead: a vibrant main street can bring new life to a city.

• Author: Coon, John
• Position: Business Trends

It resembled a scene straight from a Christmas movie.

This past November, a crowd of Holladay residents thronged the city's small Village Plaza to watch the lighting of the plazas Christmas tree. Nearly 300 people attended the event and enjoyed fresh hot chocolate and carols sung by students from nearby Olympus Junior High.

This holiday scene played out exactly as Holladay Mayor Dennis Webb envisioned when the city first committed to creating a walkable downtown area more than a decade ago. Webb wants Holladay residents to feel a special bond with the community where they live.

"Its home," Webb says. "It's part of the fabric of my roots. So many people don't have that. The sense of community is gone. And that has to do with place. For most people, community ends at the gutter"

Many towns and cities across Utah have taken to redeveloping and revitalizing their downtown areas as a means of creating a stronger sense of community. This revitalization push is not based solely on idealistic principles: it also makes good business sense to create a vibrant downtown or "main street" district.

Infusing New Life

Holladay put a considerable amount of work into creating a walkable main street village that featured the plaza as its centerpiece. The first phase meant installing new infrastructure--roads were rebuilt and power lines buried. A new plaza adjacent to Holladay Boulevard and Murray-Holladay Road was constructed. Those three projects alone came with hefty price tags. It cost $6 million to do road work, $2 million to build the plaza and $1 million to bury the power lines.

A second phase will begin this year when Holladay builds a mixed-use central block to anchor its main street village. It will consist of 21,000 square feet of retail space and 20,000 square feet of office space. Construction on the central block is slated to begin in late spring or early summer.

Several businesses are already interested in becoming tenants in the central block and Webb estimates that 50 to 75 jobs will be created through this mixed-use development. "Its an investment," he says. "You have to look at it that way"

Looking at it as a long-term investment is the approach other Utah towns and cities have taken to infuse new life into stagnant downtown areas. Redevelopments have occurred up and down the Wasatch Front from Brigham City to Provo.

In 2005, Magna began restoring 2700 South from 8800 West to 9200 West by installing new curbs, sidewalks and streetlights and...