Bountiful is looking to revitalize Main Street environs

BOUNTIFUL — Main Street, for the most part, is quiet here.

While traffic and people bustle on other streets in this small city, fewer than a dozen people were perusing the shops on Main between 100 and 200 South on a recent Friday afternoon. Inside one shop, Me & My House, owner Janet Wortley had taped bright yellow and green signs announcing discounts between 20 percent and 70 percent throughout the store.

After six years on Main selling home decor, Wortley is selling off merchandise and preparing to open a consignment shop. But she still has hope that Main Street, with its old, quaint shops and tree-lined sidewalks, will once again become a unique shopping district.

Bountiful city officials are working to make that happen. Two years ago, the city began collaborating with Envision Utah — a regional planning and "smart growth" development group — on a plan to revitalize Bountiful's Main Street and surrounding neighborhoods.

This past January, the plan was submitted for public comment. Now, 10 months later, the city has begun steps to make the vision a reality.

"The investments are happening," said Aric Jensen, Bountiful's planning and economic development director.

The goal is to transform Main Street back into a vibrant gathering place, like it was in the early 1900s, when the streetcars rolled down Main and people got off to go to the saloon or opera house. City planners also want to bring back a little flavor from the 1950s, when people walked the blocks to go grocery shopping at Hayward's Market or buy a fountain drink at Hunter's Ice Cream.

"We need a few more shops like that," said Tom Tolman, a city councilman and local historian who used to shop at Haywards for his parents. "I think there's a certain era that we want to try to bring it back to."

Ted Knowlton, a planner with Envision Utah, said his group and the city started the revitalization plan with the hope of making Main Street a "walkable" environment, similar to what it was 50 to 100 years ago. The city firmed up standards for architecture and parking requirements, so buildings can't be set back from the street with parking lots out front.

Instead, storefronts will line the sidewalks. And parking will be on the street, or in lots behind the shops.

"We are seeing interest in the private sector for walkable forms of development, I think, by leaps and bounds," Knowlton said. "And not just in Utah, but across the country."

"If not on Main Street, where would the heart of Bountiful be?" he added.