In a video on her store’s Facebook page in late March, Oak Grove shop owner Jill Easley announced she would be closing her storefront earlier than planned — later that day. Easley decided to shut down her store in downtown Oak Grove after more than eight years on South Broadway. She relocated her business to a different vintage store in Blue Springs. “Such a blessing to be in downtown Oak Grove for the last eight and a half years,” Easley told her Facebook followers. “I have truly enjoyed getting to know each and every one of you, hearing a little bit about your life and your story, and I will miss that the most out of everything that has happened in the last eight years. I will miss all of you.” “Closing” was written in large letters above the shop’s door in late February, after Easley made the call to move the store. She said a lack of foot traffic made it difficult to reach profit margins in her store, which stocked home goods, jewelry and more. While the store is in the center of the town of nearly 10,000 and sits on the town’s main thoroughfare, it also happens to be along a state highway. Route F, known as South Broadway through town, connects U.S. 50 to Interstate 70 and is a popular route for tractor-trailers as they traverse the area. The Missouri Department of Transportation has authority over the highway and made the call to expand it to mostly five lanes in 2011. Through the downtown district, the highway shrinks to three lanes as drivers pass by a handful of retail spaces, insurance offices, hair salons and other service businesses. “There’s just not a lot of foot traffic,” Easley told The Beacon. “That is one issue with having this be such a thoroughfare.” “It makes me sad,” she said. “I know there’s just not a lot of shopping down here and out this way. But then it makes it too easy to shop on Amazon.” Easley was a member of Oak Grove’s Chamber of Commerce and part of a group of small-business owners who wanted to start up a downtown revitalization project. The group worked on staging events to encourage people to shop downtown. Ultimately, without lots of community buy-in, they struggled to get the effort off the ground. “We were like, ‘You know what, we own these businesses down here. This should not be our responsibility,’” she said. The shop owners weren’t alone in their aspirations for downtown. Oak Grove Mayor Dana Webb has been looking for ways to make it more welcoming to pedestrians since she was elected in 2020. “I think we got the expansion several years too early,” Webb said of the project, which she wishes had more beautification measures built-in during the time of construction. “I don’t think our town was big enough at that time for it.” Oak Grove advocates had previously explored joining Missouri Main Street Connection, a nonprofit that provides resources to towns across Missouri that want to launch revitalization efforts. But they ran into the same problem back then: a lack of community buy-in. A few years later, the group of business owners approached Webb to see if their efforts overlapped with the city’s priorities. But between complicated building leases and the highway, the group ran into roadblock after roadblock. “Businesses need eyes,” said Kennedy Smith, the former director of National Trust for Historic Preservation’s National Main Street Center and a current researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “They need traffic and visibility, so if cars are going through downtown at 40 miles per hour, people aren’t going to see anything.” The speed limit drops as cars travel through the heart of Oak Grove. Slower traffic can reduce some crash risk and improve pedestrian safety. “There’s just so many what-ifs,” Webb said. “I hope someday that they have engineers, a team or a board, somebody that starts to look a little bit ahead for pedestrians.… If you go to other states or other countries, you see people walking. We don’t see people walking here. If you do, it’s odd.” According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, a pedestrian hit by a vehicle traveling 32 miles per hour has a 25% risk of death . That risk increases to 50% when the vehicle is going 42 miles per hour. The World Health Organization recommends that the maximum road travel speed should be about 20 miles per hour in areas where bicyclists and pedestrians share the space. “The key thing is that the interests of transportation engineers and people who are interested in healthy, vibrant downtowns are not necessarily the same thing,” Smith said. Beautification projects, like adding trees, flowers or benches, were the first projects Webb brought to MODOT for its approval. She also wanted ways to make sidewalks feel more enclosed and less noisy for pedestrians, in an effort to limit perceived exposure to traffic and large trucks. The city first asked if it could plant trees along the sidewalks throughout downtown. That plan was rejected due to driver safety considerations — if Oak Grove wanted trees, they had to be under 4 inches in diameter in case a car crashed into them. Then, the city asked if it could put trees in large pots. That was also rejected for safety. They returned with other requests: shrubs, flowers or benches. They were all turned down. “MODOT sometimes views a road going through a town as getting people from A to Z,” said Matthew Randall, the city administrator in Oak Grove. “When you live in the town, the road is your town. It’s integral to your city.” They’ve had luck with some projects, while others haven’t gotten off the ground as quickly as they would like, Randall said. “Just being downtown, the heavy commercial traffic and tractor-trailers definitely have a negative impact on the experience,” Randall said. MODOT’s area engineers are integral links between communities and the state. They help coordinate projects and maintain infrastructure across Missouri. Usually, they are the ones who make the requests to MODOT on behalf of cities for the projects they want to pursue. “There’s a number of places where the state highway may function more as the main street of a community,” said Eric Schroeter, the deputy director and chief engineer at MODOT. “We have to balance all of that out – not only is it somebody’s main street, but it’s also a link in a transportation system that has to help people get places, and goods and products move around as well.” MODOT is in charge of the seventh-largest highway system in the country, but ranks 48th nationally in funding per mile. MODOT only pays for projects that relate specifically to their domain. Everything else falls to the cities. Officials in Oak Grove and other Missouri towns are thankful for MODOT’s collaboration and the easy access they have to their area representatives. Lebanon, Missouri, launched its downtown revitalization project officially in 2019. The town’s main street intersects with state Route 5. “The highway intersection, it can be a little dicey,” said Sarah Angst Stewart, the executive director of Downtown Lebanon. “It’s not dangerous, it’s just a little more challenging for a person who is not used to walking near semi trucks blowing by.” Lebanon has been working with MODOT over the past decade to improve walkability throughout downtown. The public works department meets with the state on a monthly basis to talk about future projects and address concerns as they arise. “There are challenges involved with having a highway where there are pedestrians,” Angst Stewart said. “MODOT has put an effort into making sure that it is more pedestrian friendly.” Since putting a concerted effort into downtown revitalization plans, the mix of businesses in downtown Lebanon has started to shift. “This is probably every rural downtown. It’s the cheapest rent because it’s a lot of stuff packed close together, in older buildings that haven’t had a lot of love and attention,” she said. But the exact opposite has started to happen in Lebanon. What was once a downtown that was heavily saturated with insurance companies, accountants and attorneys is now home to new retail and dining. “It’s really cool to see. I don’t know if it’s finally the right time,” Angst Stewart said. “What’s happening is this resurgence of small-town downtowns. Where do you find that real community? It’s downtown.” In the four years that Lebanon has invested in having a director for the downtown district, the area has doubled its taxable sales from $5 million in 2019 to $10 million in 2023. “By just focusing on it, that is a lot of tax revenue that can then go back to our local economy and fund things like our police, fire and capital improvements,” she said. Up north in Chillicothe, the town has reaped the benefits of long-term planning and making a name for its history. The city is the home of sliced bread, which was invented there in 1928. U.S. 65 runs north-south through Missouri and is Chillicothe’s main street. “Highway 65, or Washington Street, is the heart of that artery that fuels our town,” said Amy Supple, Chillicothe’s tourism director. “(People) get to travel right through the heart of our community, so they’re not bypassed. It’s not an exit sign that they see.” In the early 2000s, business owners, the tourism organization and the main street organization put their heads together to find ways to diversify downtown. What resulted was a 30-year strategic plan, and the organization set short-term priorities to reach long-term goals. A long-term plan is crucial for investment in infrastructure, said Chris Hess, the executive director of the Pioneer Trails Regional Planning Commission, which coordinates efforts across Johnson, Lafayette, Pettis and Saline counties in Missouri. “Funding follows planning,” Hess said. “The knee-jerk reaction for funding does not end well very often. We’re thinking about what can drive the economics. Do we see a population boom coming up? Is there potential for expansion in this area?” That’s part of what Oak Grove is trying to assess. The city’s population is growing. In 2010, the town had about 5,000 residents, according to the census. Today, the town is pushing toward a population of 10,000. For now, Oak Grove has negotiated with MODOT that the city will take control of the parking spaces that line the downtown district. And they’ll keep trying to work with the state to make the area more inviting to potential visitors, despite its popularity for commercial truck drivers. “We haven’t really talked to them in detail about that aspect of the pedestrian versus the car versus the connectivity,” Webb said. “Because we’re pretty much just stopped at the driver effect.”
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