Twenty years ago, Dowagiac leaders recognized the potential the city’s downtown had as not just a place for visitors to shop or grab a bite to eat, but as somewhere people can live and start a family.

With many businesses having vacant second story spaces — once used by past owners as living quarters — city hall set out to transform them into modern apartments, capturing nearly $1.5 million worth of grant money for the effort.

Today, downtown contains around 60 apartments, nearly all of which are currently occupied, said Mayor Don Lyons. These dwellings not only help define the district, but also supply a steady stream of revenue for storeowners during slower times of the year, Lyons said.

“Our downtown is alive and well,” he said. “That is the benchmark by which cities are gauged. You cannot have a viable city without a viable downtown.”

Now, Lyons and other city officials are focusing their attention on another local diamond in the rough — the Dowagiac Creek.

Following a productive 2016, which saw the redevelopment of downtown’s Commercial Street, city leaders are preparing for the year ahead. After spending the last several years focusing on expanding the footprint of the central business district, through the opening of the Dowagiac Area History Museum in 2013 and James E. Snow Building in 2014, officials plan on directing much of their time and energy on the development of several pieces of property along the creek, Lyons said.

Among these lots is a piece of creekside property on Cass Avenue, which the city acquired in 2014. Leaders are eyeing several potential improvements to the currently vacant space, including building a pavilion, restrooms and an overlook atop the creek, Lyons said.

“It will be a nice park when it is finished,” he said. “It will not just be a grass lot.”

The city plans to connect the park to other creekside properties, including Rudy Park, on M-62, and a piece of undeveloped land on Riverside Drive, through a trail network, which will also connect with the current system located at Rudolphi Woods, Lyons said.

To fund this project, as well as future developments for the other two creekside properties, the city will rely heavily on grant funding. The city submitted a grant proposal to the state Department of Natural Resources for work at Rudy Park last year, which narrowly missed the cut.

The goal of the projects will be to improve public access to the Dowagiac Creek for recreational activities, and to give residents more places for walking and running through the expanded trail system. Lyons and other city officials decided to focus on this aspect due to the popularity of the walking paths at Russom Park since they were installed several years ago, the mayor said.

In spite of the shift of focus from the brick and mortar of the streets of downtown to the grass and gravel of the outdoors, the goal of these projects remains consistent with that of other development projects: to improve the lives of Dowagiac’s residents.

“We are creating a community where people want to live and raise a family by giving them the amenities they need,” Lyons said. “From the less romantic elements, such as improving sewage treatment, to the more romantic ones, such as improving the entryways into downtown, these are all things that have to be done, and done well.”