Lakewood Alive leads restoration process for 1446 Mars Avenue home

While the majority of our Ohio Main Street Programs devote 100% of their time to improving their respective downtowns, some programs have begun dipping their toes into the residential revitalization pool. Main Street Wooster helped make the Howey Houses project a reality, and Main Street Medina recently completed its Renew Medina project to give new life to a neglected residence adjacent to the downtown.
Now, Lakewood Alive has teamed with Detroit Shoreway to rehab a former boarding house back into a single-family home. You can learn more about the home’s happy outcome here (and make sure you check out the Before/After image gallery at the bottom of the post).
Although downtown revitalization programs have traditionally focused their resources solely on work to improve the business district, we’ve come to learn that the downtown’s health is more often than not inextricably tied to the health of the surrounding neighborhoods, including the residential neighborhoods that ring the downtown. Programs that have forged community partnerships, and that have the financial and human resources to take on these special projects, are finding that their mission-driven accomplishments sometimes happen outside of the downtown, as well as in the downtown.