The Downtown Springfield and Mid-Illinois Medical District Master Plan is a blueprint for the future with a focus on Springfield's Downtown and the Mid-Illinois Medical District. It is created by the community and will result in a set of policies and programs that direct future growth and development. Additionally, the creation of a Plan can lead to strategies that will help effectively guide community leaders as they make substantive and thoughtful decisions for the project study area.
Learn more by visiting the Downtown and Medical District Master Plan website.
Two one-way streets running through the heart of downtown Springfield and the Mid-Illinois Medical District are set to be converted to two-way streets in 2023.
The conversions – Fourth Street from South Grand Avenue to Dodge Street, and Adams Street from Sixth Street to Ninth Street –will promote economic growth in the commercial corridors. Several reports have found that two-way downtown streets slow down traffic but are also safer.
Plans call for Fourth Street eventually to become two-way from Dodge north to North Grand Avenue sometime after the Third Street rail line crossing Fourth just north of Dodge is removed. More information can be found on the City’s Public Works website.
The Springfield Rail Improvements Project will relocate all passenger and freight traffic from the Third Street corridor to Tenth Street; construct grade separations (roadway underpasses and one overpass) at the critical rail crossings on both the Tenth and Nineteenth Street corridors; and eliminate train horns in the City between Stanford Avenue and Sangamon Avenue.
More information is available on the Springfield Rail Improvements website.
Trustees for the University of Illinois have approved the purchase of a downtown building to house the planned UIS Innovation Center, designed to provide a hub for technology, business, policy and workforce development.
The university approved the purchase of 401 E. Washington St. for $950,000 from the Illinois Sheriffs Association, to provide a home for the university's workforce initiatives. ISA currently has its main office in the building.
The three-story, 26,400-square-foot building will be renovated and modernized, with design work scheduled to start later this year and construction likely starting in 2024.
The site will be the home of the university's Innovate Springfield program, currently housed on the Old State Capitol Plaza, as well as offices for university staff, labs for entrepreneurs and developers and collaborative space for the UIS Center for State Policy and Leadership and other groups to develop public policy.
More information is available on the UIS website.
View the State-Journal Register story.