Lisle aims to make downtown 'refreshingly different'

If you happen to blink in downtown Lisle in the coming months, you might not recognize where you are.

The village unveiled plans Friday for more than $10 million in renovations that will begin Monday with the restructuring of several blocks of Main Street.

When the project is complete, village officials hope the downtown area surrounding Main Street, south of Ogden Avenue, will be transformed into a "nature-focused retail, restaurant and shopping district."

Catherine Schuster, Lisle's economic development director, said the village reached a low point with its downtown district in the late 1990s. Businesses left for neighboring towns with fresher downtowns and many buildings went vacant.

Nine years later, she said the village still is addressing recommendations made in a 1999 master plan to guide the growth and development of downtown.

Bring people in

The first step in rebuilding a downtown, consultants told the village, is bringing people there to live and work.

To accomplish that goal, they cleared the former police and fire station and village hall from their Main Street locations. In doing so, they reclaimed 1.67 acres dissected by Spencer Street.

New England Builders then won a nine-way bidding war to build 64 condominium units in the area bordered by Main Street on the west, Center Street on the east and Burlington Avenue on the south, with 15,000 square feet of retail on the first floor and a separate 11-townhouse development on the east side of Spencer Street.

The development, planners said, would be the core of the downtown redevelopment plan.

"We need to repopulate the downtown," Schuster said. "If we are going to create something walk-able and pedestrian-friendly and all these little shop-y, boutique-y things, we really need people living, working and commuting through here."

Prairie Streetscape

Calling the current streetscape "old and tired," Schuster said something needs to be done to create a new environment.

"Our master plan said, 'Hey, you've got this highway down the middle of your block. You need to rethink that,'" she said. "So we're spending $8.3 million to fix that."

As early as Monday, project coordinator Carl Muell said, crews will begin narrowing Main Street from four lanes to two from 200 feet north of Ogden Avenue to 200 feet south of Burlington Avenue.

The project will include new streets and sidewalks, lighting, benches, fountains, extensive landscaping and prairie-style infrastructure, giving a nod to the nearby Morton Arboretum.

"We are the Arboretum Village, so we want our streetscape to reflect that with the new prairie style," Schuster said. "What you see out there now won't be there in a few months."

Muell said all roadwork is expected to be complete by November.

Storm water fix

The village recently purchased an entire block of homes in a flood plain just west of Main Street to transform the vacant site into a 4.5-acre storm water retention basin, eliminating the need for many developments to provide their own on-site storage.

If the village gets a $400,000 state department of natural resources grant, officials hope to spruce the basin up with gazebos, lighting, overlooks and warming stations.

"It's going to be great when we can turn this public amenity into such a beautiful area that it will become the gateway to downtown," Schuster said.

New zoning

A new central business district has been created to lure more retail and high-quality restaurants into downtown. An additional perimeter zoning district was created along the outskirts to cater to the office, service and residential uses wanting to locate near downtown.

Users in these zones will qualify for several of the village's revamped programs, including facade grants, demolition grants and sales tax rebates.

Bigger garden walk

Currently a focal point in the downtown, Schuster said the Garden Walk, which begins at 4744 Main St., would be expanded to create several tree- and perennial-lined paths leading to various destinations.

"We started it on the west side of Main Street and it is our answer to Naperville's Riverwalk," Schuster said. "We hope to connect it to Main Street, run it across the top of the New England developments all the way to village hall and up to the Lisle Cemetery."

All of the initiatives are scheduled to be complete within two years. Planners are hoping for sooner.

"We need to get people back here walking around, shopping and working," Schuster said. "That's how we know it worked."

To view more renderings and plan details visit www.villageoflisle.org.

FYI

From Monday through June, the east side of Main Street will be closed from Burlington to Ogden avenues as crews build the new road, curbs, traffic signals and decorative lighting. The sidewalk will be open. Traffic on Main Street will be one-way southbound and parking will be on the west side of Main Street.