Jenny Hwang, sophomore in LAS, likes relaxing outside Cowboy Monkey and drinking coffee at Cafe Kopi, but she limits her trips into downtown Champaign to nights and weekends.

“It’s so far from campus and takes too much of an effort to get there during the day,” Hwang said. “At least at night there is a reason to go, with all the different restaurants and bars to choose from.”

The City of Champaign is trying to change that image. Led by the upscale One Main development, a condominium building, at the corner of Main Street and Neil Street, the city is trying to transform itself from an island of nightlife into a oasis of bars, businesses and hip urban living.

It’s a formula small cities around the nation have turned to in an effort to redevelop flagging downtowns. Apartments and lofts are a key part of the formula, proponents say, because the predominantly young, single residents are more likely to invite their friends over, shop in downtown stores, and eat in local restaurants.

“It creates a new hype and makes the value higher in downtown,” Champaign City Planner T.J. Blakeman said.

Chris Monahan, owner of a brush fiber manufacturer in Arcola, Ill., moved into his One Main condo when the building opened in August 2004. His new home, overlooking Guido’s restaurant, is the closest he could come to the lifestyle he left behind in Denver and Chicago.

He’s hoping other young people, singles and retirees will be drawn into the city for the same reasons he was.

“I’m 32 years old, no kids, never been married,” he said. “So I don’t fit the suburban mold.”

Neither does Michael Himick, the publisher of the online information service KnowledgeNews. Himick lived in Champaign while attending graduate school at the University in the early 1990s. During that time, downtown Champaign had a few bars and a reputation for being unsafe. Currently, Himick owns a One Main loft and said he has good reason to believe in the city’s future.

“Downtown Champaign is really starting to feel like a pocket of urbanity all its own,” Himick said. “The lofts are a consistent part of that.”

Blakeman said today’s successes took root back in 1994 when the city began handing out federal grant money to encourage building owners to make permanent improvements to downtown buildings. Whatever a developer or owner spent, the city matched, Blakeman said.

The bars and restaurants took off first, and residential development came later, beginning about six years ago. One Main is the newest and largest with 23 units above offices, restaurants, a jewelry store and resident parking. Plans for a second business and residential development, as well as a parking garage, are underway.

In addition to full-time residents like Monahan and Himick, the building has attracted investment from people who want a second home or an attractive place to stay when visiting.

Tom DiSanto, a bar owner in Chicago, graduated from the University almost two decades ago but likes to visit for Illini games. He bought a One Main loft to stay in when he drives down for games.

The University bought one for the same reason. Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates and software company executive Tom Siebel stayed there when they spoke on campus last year, said Cynthia Faullin, One Main development director.

“It’s a lot better than staying in a dirty hotel when I come to visit,” DiSanto said.

Faullin said she thinks mixed-use developments like One Main are key to the city’s long-term success.

“Nobody wants to have bodies only from eight at night to two in the morning,” she said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Still, changing a city takes time, planners and developers say.

Lafayette, Ind., across the Wabash River from West Lafayette and Purdue University, has been redeveloping its downtown area since 1990.

Tom Van Horn of Lafayette’s community redevelopment department said it took the city more than a decade to improve quality of life with new restaurants, businesses and residential developments.

“Unless you have a sugar daddy who says ‘I’m going to build such and such,’ it takes about ten years,” Van Horn said.

Conflicts from the integration can be much more immediate. Street noise, parking congestion, even pet poop can cause tensions between longtime business owners and new residents.

John Rogers, a realtor who regularly sells property in downtown Champaign, said businesses open late at night create noise that you wouldn’t find in quieter, more suburban settings. That can bother residents if floors aren’t properly insulated.

Monahan said he hasn’t minded the noise he hears from his windows overlooking Guido’s outdoor seating, but he wonders what it will be like in the summer. He said he used to live next to the EL tracks in Chicago though.

“I’ve become so used to it that it’s gotten to the point where I can’t sleep without some amount of noise,” Monahan said.

Parking has also become an issue, with residents taking up more of the available spots. Autumn Bates, owner of Austin’s Sportswear, 12 E. Main St., said she often finds residents parking outside her store, causing her customers to park further away.

“The parking has become so bad, but the city doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it,” she said.

Blakeman said the city is working to resolve that conflict as well as others – like the downtown employee who complains she keeps tripping over dog poop left behind on the sidewalks.

“There is always going to be a conflict of interest,” Blakeman said. “By nature, people clash.”

Still, for students like Hwang, the changes to downtown are good news.

“The city is starting to look really cool,” she said. “I’m curious to see what’s going to happen next.”