By: Dean Vaglia | Mount Clemens-Clinton-Harrison Journal | Published January 9, 2026
MOUNT CLEMENS — With Macomb Place reopened and the Downtown Revitalization Project nearing completion, city officials are turning their attention to Main Street in Mount Clemens.
The city held a public hearing at City Hall for the Main Street Revitalization Project on the evening of Jan. 7, bringing representatives from city engineering firm Anderson, Eckstein & Westrick, Inc. to hear from residents about the conceptual designs for a road diet on Main Street north and south of Cass Avenue. Hearings were handled separately for the two ends, as the projects are considered separate in order for each to be eligible for around $1.1 million in Michigan Department of Transportation grant funding.
“The project is affecting Roberston (Street) to Cass (Avenue),” AEW Project Manager Ashley Carpenter said. “We are proposing a design of a road diet, and it will be strictly through pavement striping. We will be reducing the two lanes to one lane each way, north and south, and then adding a center turn lane and then a bike lane on either side going in the flow of traffic. The entire road will be resurfaced (as) asphalt.”
While the South Main Street project is limited to repaving and repainting, the North Main Street project is more substantial.
“The project limits are from Cass (Avenue) to Market (Street) … The concept plan proposes to maintain the northbound and southbound travel lanes and still maintain left turn lanes near intersections. That will mean reducing the center turn lane to boulevards where it’s not near an intersection,” Carpenter said. “We also will be putting in a bike lane very similar to South Main, one on each side of North Main. And then will be converting angled parking spaces into parallel parking spaces and then resurfacing the sections that are not being removed and replaced.”
One question that arose about the South Main project was why it will not be a median-divided boulevard like North Main. Carpenter explained that the type of businesses along South Main Street necessitated a less intensive overhaul.
“The thinking is that north of Cass (Avenue) is generally more of your traditional downtown where you have more folks walking and a lot more pedestrians,” Carpenter said. “South Main Street is a lot more industrial, just not so much walking. You may have the bike lane, but you don’t have the same amount of people walking. And with that you have a lot more trucks, so putting that boulevard in wouldn’t make as much sense on South Main.”
Bike lanes are being added along the length of Main Street in the project, which brought a number of questions about the design of the lanes. The bike lanes along South Main were shown as unprotected in the presented conceptual designs, while the North Main bike lanes would be protected with cars parallel parked and a few electric vehicle charging stations.
The change from angled parking to parallel parking on North Main received some comment from attendees, though not as much as people may have anticipated.
“I was pleasantly surprised at today’s downtown meeting that we had,” Mayor Laura Kropp said. “I was waiting for my head to get chopped off (over reduced parking on Main Street) and really, we didn’t hear that at all. We heard one person who was saying, ‘How many of you rode a bike here?’ And we’re like, ‘Well, it’s January,’ so there was that … and he didn’t have any issue with parking.”
Along with providing aesthetics and a barrier between traffic lanes, the medians along North Main also serve as pedestrian safety islands while crossing the road. Signs reminding drivers to yield and a flashing walking sign are recommended to be added along North Main.
Attendees were generally positive about the projects, with several participants verbalizing their approval throughout the evening.
With the MDOT-required hearings completed, the project is able to move forward into the official design stage. Construction is expected to begin in the spring of 2028. The roads are expected to have limited traffic flow during construction, and the sanitary sewer beneath Main Street is scheduled to be re-lined due to detected damage.
Attendees expressed an interest in holding more hearings about the project as its design was worked on, a prospect Kropp was open to.
“I think with the feedback that we got today, I can see where early in the more formal design phase having another meeting like this would be beneficial to everybody,” Kropp said. “It’s nice having more people at the table.”
The mayor was also positive about some ideas discussed at the Jan. 7 hearings being incorporated into the design.
“Oh sure,” Kropp said. “I think — because these were just conceptual designs — through the formal design process a lot of the input that was given today will be considered and could actually really change the looks of some of the projects. I think it will impact it quite greatly.”
Those with questions about the project can contact AEW at fluci@aewinc.com or jfenech@aewinc.com.