Ypsi will unveil downtown plans on Monday

Identity creation. Those two words will play a critical role in downtown Ypsilanti‘s new five-year strategic plan, which is set to be unveiled on Monday evening.

The plan will plot the course for how to improve Ypsi’s downtown district over the next half decade. City officials and downtown revitalization consultants HyettPalma met with local residents late last month to come up with the plan. The popular sentiment was to that Ypsi needed to assert itself and take control of its identity.

“A big thing that came out is ‘I want downtown Ypsi to be downtown Ypsi,'” says Brian Vosburg, director of the Ypsilanti Downtown Development Authority. “We don’t want to aspire to be downtown Ann Arbor or anywhere else.”

To accomplish this, the city, the DDA in particular, will look into marketing the downtown more and creating its own brand instead of letting others pigeon hole it. The idea is to create a niche for downtown Ypsi to attract people not only in Washtenaw County but from across the whole region.

“This is a great downtown and if people come downtown they’re going to come back,” Vosburg says.

The plan also calls for developing new ways to support existing businesses and attract new ones. The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. in the Riverside Arts Center, 76 N. Huron St. For information, contact Vosburg at brian@ypsilantidda.org or at (734) 482-1410.

Source: Brian Vosburg, director of the Ypsilanti Downtown Development Authority
Writer: Jon Zemke