NEW HAVEN, Ind. (WANE) – Broadway Street in New Haven may look a little different in the next five to 10 years. Historic Broadway is creating a plan to revitalize the area.

Historic Broadway is a group made up of community members set to fundraise and receive grants in an effort to revitalize downtown through a program called Main Street. Through this program, businesses located in downtown areas across the nation have had the opportunity to upgrade to attract new residents, visitors and more neighboring businesses.

Tammy Taylor, CEO of the New Haven Chamber of Commerce and the Chair of Historic Broadway said the project will take place within the next five to 10 years.

“The first couple of years is going to be revitalizing what we already have and maintaining it, and then hopefully bring along the new businesses,” Taylor said. “That way, they see that they’re developing and growing and we want to be belonging to this group.”

Their focus area will go from Schnelker Park to Domino’s on Broadway Street, including a few side streets as well. Guests were invited to leave comments on what they’d like to see more of.

“Is that art, more art pieces, is that more or different types of businesses, we have a lot of trails going on already here and we just want this to be a designation for here in Allen County,” Taylor said.

Taylor said the City of New Haven is also involved. They play an advisory role to help the creation and execution of Historic Broadway.

Pone Vongphachanh, Community and Economic Development director with the City of New Haven, said this organization will create more vitality downtown, as well as more cultural and economic development in the New Haven community.

“One of the things that is lacking is that third place for people to connect. We are all social beings, and that third place where you can sit down, have coffee, socialize, and have fun with your friends. We need more of that,” Vongphachanh said.

Historic Broadway is still in the beginning stage. There are three levels of Main Street designations that they would like to move through.

The first level is approval with the Office of Community Rural Affairs Downtown Affiliate Network (OCRA). It requires organizations to work together to execute the Main Street program. The second is moving on to the Indiana Accredited Main Street (IAMS), which requires them to meet the Indiana Accreditation Standards. The final level is the Nationally Accredited Main Street (NAMS), meeting all of the Main Street Accreditation Standards.

Officials with Historic Broadway said they have until Oct. 31 to file the intent to apply for the Main Street program.