Governor Whitmer announced on March 3 that Hamtramck has been selected by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation for the Select Level of the Michigan Main Street program. The designation comes with five years of intensive technical assistance and pairs Hamtramck with the resources MEDC pours into Select Level cities. The target is the Jos.
Campau corridor, which runs between Holbrook Avenue and Caniff Street through the heart of the city. Hamtramck is two square miles, surrounded entirely by Detroit, and home to one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the United States. On any block of Jos.
Campau the storefronts will trade between Polish delis, Yemeni coffee shops, Bangladeshi groceries, Bosnian restaurants, and bars that have been there since the 1940s. The buildings themselves date mostly to the 1910s and 1920s, when the Dodge Main factory pulled the city's population from 3,500 to 48,000 in a decade. The Select designation is a payoff on years of planning.
The Hamtramck Downtown Development Authority filed a 65-component application in September 2025. Summer interns visited 150 DDA businesses to fill in the data. Milo Madole, the DDA board chair, called the corridor "one of those few quintessentially American streets that has remained true to its roots." Isabel Allaway, the city's Community and Economic Development manager and DDA director, said the designation "provides critical support to help the seeds we've already planted grow." The seeds Allaway is talking about include the Hamtramck Bazaar retail accelerator, the Discover Hamtramck campaign, the Hamtramck Night Bazaars, and an alley revitalization project led by Detroit-based Spalding DeDecker.
The Select Level provides programmatic assistance, not direct grants. What it offers is access to MEDC's planning and technical staff, training for the local DDA, and the framework for a small downtown to get more sophisticated about retention, recruitment, and design review. The corridor's bet on diversity is not a marketing line.
Allaway calls Hamtramck "a place known for giving newcomers to Michigan and the U.S. their start." The data backs it. The challenge is whether the Main Street program can preserve that character through five years of structured revitalization. Hamtramck Downtown Development Authority, Jos. Campau Avenue, Hamtramck.
