JERSEYVILLE, Ill. — When Jerseyville, Illinois, wanted to revitalize its downtown, city leaders didn’t wait for a regional economic development agency or anyone else to take the lead.
They seized the initiative by hiring St. Louis-based PGAV Planners. The result is a master plan that rebrands the historic downtown as City Center and outlines how it can become a regional destination for shopping, dining, entertainment and cultural experiences.
If that goal is achieved, among the results could be an increase in population by retaining more young people and attracting new residents to Jerseyville, officials said. From 2010 to 2020, population declined by 1.5% — from 8,465 to 8,337 — in Jerseyville, which is the Jersey County seat.
“We want to convince millennials to come and raise their families,” Jerseyville Mayor William Russell said.
The impetus for the master plan was to come out of the coronavirus pandemic with an intact small business community, said Shari Albrecht, executive director of the Jerseyville Economic Development Council, a nonprofit group that works with city officials.
“We started doing research on what the post-Covid consumer would want and we found out they wanted a place that was walkable. We knew we were not the biggest community with the most choices. In those larger communities like Edwardsville and Collinsville, you can’t walk to all of them. You have to get in your car and drive. In ours, you can walk it all,” she said.
The result is a 100-page master plan with 15 themes that include landscape design; pedestrian amenities; public art and history; and outdoor dining and patios in the City Center, a 17-block area.
Jerseyville expects to spend about $5.1 million on projects, on top of $7.1 million worth of improvements that are under construction or been completed, such as the City Center Plaza and new branded street banners.
The city plans to pay for that work with grants and funding from the private sector — not an increase in the property tax, according to Kevin Stork, Jerseyville’s commissioner of accounts and finance.
Read the rest of the story on the St. Louis Business Journal website.
