Hamtramck lands a Select-level Main Street designation, with Jos. Campau as the target

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced on March 3 that Hamtramck has been chosen for the Select Level of the Michigan Main Street program, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation's most hands-on tier of downtown revitalization support. The designation comes with five years of intensive technical assistance, and the focus falls squarely on Jos. Campau Avenue, the commercial spine that runs through the center of the city between Holbrook and Caniff.

Hamtramck joins a roster of Michigan communities that the state pairs with its planning and design staff under the program. According to the MEDC's announcement, Select-level support is built around technical help rather than direct grant money. Communities get access to the corporation's planning specialists, training for the local downtown authority, and a structured framework for business retention, recruitment, and design review.

The corridor the city is betting on is unusual by design. Hamtramck is two square miles, surrounded entirely by Detroit, and ranks among the most ethnically diverse cities in the country. A single block of Jos. Campau can hold Polish delis, Yemeni coffee shops, Bangladeshi groceries, Bosnian restaurants, and bars that have operated since the 1940s. Much of the building stock dates to the 1910s and 1920s, the boom years when factory work pulled the city's population up by the tens of thousands in a single decade.

Milo Madole, who chairs the Hamtramck Downtown Development Authority board, framed that history as the whole point. He called Jos. Campau "one of those few quintessentially American streets that has remained true to its roots, even as it has organically evolved in rhythm with the city and country around it." In the MEDC's announcement, he added that the corridor was "built 'the right way' in the 1910s and 1920s," and described it as "a place that's too good to fake."

Isabel Allaway, the city's Community and Economic Development manager and DDA director, said Hamtramck was "honored to be designated a Michigan Main Street Select community."

The designation rewards a long stretch of groundwork. Per the city's Michigan Main Street page, Hamtramck and its Downtown Development Authority submitted a 65-component Select-level application in September 2025, built on data the city gathered downtown. Summer youth interns visited roughly 150 DDA businesses and the city engaged about 100 owners and managers to document properties and uses along the corridor. The city has framed the broader goal as strengthening Hamtramck's historic core by building on its cultural diversity, supporting local entrepreneurs, and improving public spaces.

State officials cast the program as an economic engine. Michele Wildman, the MEDC's senior vice president of community planning, said in the announcement that "programs like Michigan Main Street provide communities with the tools needed to create jobs." Whitmer, in the same release, said Michigan's main streets "create jobs, grow small businesses, and make our communities vibrant places to live, work, and play." The MEDC reported that, over the past year, Main Street communities statewide generated more than $9.1 million in private investment, 93 new businesses, and 83 facade improvements and building rehabilitations, and that the program has helped launch more than 2,100 businesses since 2003.

The open question is whether five years of structured revitalization can sharpen the corridor's economics without sanding down the character that made it worth saving. Hamtramck is betting that the same diversity that defines Jos. Campau is also its strongest commercial asset.