There have been major changes in downtown Lima in the last several years with more changes on the way that are intended to revitalize the downtown even more. But will it bring the needed foot traffic to local retail shops?
Anyone can see the changes in downtown Lima as several new businesses have popped up and announcements of future developments have sparked interest in what downtown can become. Local business leaders heard from several of their peers at the Lima Allen County Chamber of Commerce's monthly breakfast about how they are investing in the heart of the city.
Businessman Devin Muniz adds, “We just purchased it, it’s 409 North Main Street. We just purchased it a couple of months ago. We are bringing all new retail spaces to the bottom level. We are putting apartments, affordable apartments back up on the second level. We hope to make them for young professionals, the people coming into downtown. And then we don’t know yet what we’re going to do with the other 20,000 square feet but we have space to expand.”
Muniz first invested in downtown Lima with the purchase of the building on High Street which is now Zinum 12. The owner of Alter Ego Comics has been in downtown for more than a decade and believes that creating multi-use buildings could be key into expanding a customer base.
Marc Bowker, owner of Alto Ego Comics explains, “We have plans to add five commercial spaces to the second floor of our building. I would love for all five of those of those spaces to be filled with retail because we don’t have enough shopping downtown. The shopping we do have is very patchwork. We have a couple of stores in one block, a couple of stores on another block. We need contiguous shopping. We’ve seen that second-floor retail works in cities like Yellow Springs, and Dayton, The Oregon District, the Short North, there’s no reason why we can’t have second-floor retail in downtown Lima because we are kind of out of room at this point.”
Bowker also says that there is only so much that the individual investors can do to try and revitalize the downtown and there needs to be a form of leadership to bring them all together for the better good. One concern of businesses is parking. Public parking for their customers and uniform parking throughout the downtown area.
Mayor Sharetta Smith says, “We need to bring all of that in together. And so we heard about the need for a downtown plan. We’ve heard about the need to be consistent with parking, and so as city government, we’ll be convening with these businesses to talk about how we can continue this upward trajectory, ride the momentum, the positive momentum that we have going on now, and make our downtown that vibrant vital place that people want to come.”
The mayor says that there is 60-million dollars’ worth of investment currently going on in Lima’s downtown and with continued public-private partnerships there is more that can be done.
