Elyria appears one step closer to a revived downtown

Development projects are often introduced with great fanfare, but they sometimes later fizzle. That's why Wednesday's announcement that a project aimed at rejuvenating downtown Elyria had been awarded $2 million in state historic preservation tax credits was such good news. It showed that Grafton developer Kevin Flanigan's project has real momentum. The announcement came on the heels of $3.4 million in tax credits from the state's Transformational Mixed-Use Development Program and another $590,000 in brownfield remediation funds that the project has received this year. "I can't say enough about the opportunities and the connection to the citizens of Elyria and the surrounding area that this is going to provide that will truly be a transformative project," Flanigan said. It's an ambitious project, to be sure, and one that has real potential to position the downtown to thrive in the future, as Elyria Mayor Frank Whitfield noted Wednesday. "This is Elyria's story," he said. "How do we take our history and build off of it to take us into the future? I think this is a great example of taking something that could have been written off and finding a new purpose and bringing us into the 21st century." Flanigan plans to renovate 67,000 square feet of the Dixon and Robinson buildings into a 230-seat esports arena. That phase of the project, dubbed Forge 417, is expected to include a restaurant, offices, a classroom and studio space. The historic tax credits announced by the Ohio Department of Development are for the Dixon Building, which is on Ohio's register of historic buildings. The Robinson Building also was recently added to the register, putting it in line for possible additional tax credits. Also Wednesday, Flanigan said the project would be part of Elyria's Skill City Promise, a partnership between the city and Lorain County Community College that offers short-term certificate and micro-credential programs for Elyria residents. That's a smart way to make even more use of what could become the city's high-tech hub. In addition to his plans for those two buildings, Flanigan plans to build a 76,000-square-foot apartment building at 381 Broad Street, where the Mussey Block once stood. That portion of the project is expected to include a wine bar and underground parking. Flanigan also intends to turn the site of the former Uncle Vic's nightclub into a parking lot. Before the building was destroyed in a fire last year, he had planned to turn it into a multi-tenant commercial building. All of that work is expected to cost more than $36.4 million. It's a sizeable investment of both private and public dollars, but such expenditures and bold thinking are necessary if the city is going to have a vibrant downtown again. Once upon a time, downtown was the heart of the city. It began to fade when shopping shifted to Midway Mall, which opened in 1966. The mall, of course, has been on a downward trajectory for years as well, although Whitfield is working on another project that could see it, too, transformed. The downtown revitalization effort appears to be much further along, although Flanigan is waiting for design approvals from state and federal officials. Once those are secured, he would seek local permits to begin initial restoration work. There's still a long way to go, but progress is being made. In some ways it's not all that dissimilar to waiting for a new video game to drop, something gamers anticipating the esports facility are familiar with. They are used to hearing bits and pieces of information about progress on a game as developers work to turn an idea into a finished product. The hope for any game is that it will be worth the wait. The same goes for Flanigan's vision of a revitalized downtown.