Shortly before 10 pm on a warm Tuesday night in June, Dubuque resident Marija Magner stood outside of downtown bar Lot One, awaiting the arrival of a group of friends and watching as patrons filed in and out of the establishments lining the block.

Magner, 33, moved from Oregon to Dubuque three summers ago to accept a job at McGraw-Hill Higher Education. It wasnt long before a friend suggested she pay a visit to a subsection of the downtown district known as Lower Main.

Today the bustling stretch of Main Street, which generally begins at its intersection with Fourth Street and stretches four blocks south until the street dead-ends, serves as a centerpiece of Magners Dubuque experience.

There are bars. There are restaurants. My hairdresser is here. … It has multiple modalities, she said. There are reasons to come here during the day and the night. It is just this well-developed area where everything is close by.

It hasnt always been this way.

Longtime business owners recall a time when the area was infamous for its blight, with an adult bookstore and theater dotting a landscape largely defined by its vacant storefronts. Today, the area is a hotspot for hospitality, high-end restaurants and nightlife.

Molly Grover, president and CEO of Dubuque Area Chamber of Commerce, proudly boasts that Lower Main has witnessed a full turnaround.

It has something hip and cool and edgy for the young professional community, and it offers hotels, restaurants and fine dining for the retired and middle-aged community, Grover said. It makes the area very eclectic.

LONGTIME HOME

For more than four decades, Rob McCoys livelihood has centered on the 200 block of Main Street.

He opened McCoy Jewelers, 261 Main St, in 1973 and has occupied the same storefront ever since. In addition, he and his wife have lived in a third-floor apartment above the store for the past 27 years.

For McCoy, downtown living presents an ideal lifestyle.

He boasted that there are more than a dozen restaurants within walking distance — including popular Lower Main eateries Crust Italian Kitchen amp; Bar, Pepper Sprout and Vinny Vanucchis — and noted that a recent increase in tenants has made the area feel more like a neighborhood.

There was a time, however, when McCoys neighbors were less than ideal. For many years, an adult book store was located one block to the north of McCoy Jewelers, and an XXX cinema conducted its business one block to the south.

The areas reputation suffered so significantly that Lower Main developed a negative connotation. Subsequent plans to improve the area suggested eliminating the term Lower Main altogether and, to this day, McCoy still dislikes hearing the area referred to by that name.

It was a difficult era to go through. We had a lot of customers who just didnt feel comfortable down here, McCoy recalled. That part of history is gone, thank heavens.

Looking at his neighborhood today, McCoy can trace the improvements to several factors.

I guess what really stands out are improvements made by both the city, with its understanding this is viable district, as well as the risk-takers and the entrepreneurs who said, I will put my money where my mouth is, McCoy said.

City Manager Mike Van Milligen said a group of concerned business and property owners from the area first approached city leaders in the early 2000s.

They came to the city and said, We have a lot of problems down here, and our investment is disintegrating, he recalled.

Working in concert with business and property owners, the City of Dubuque developed a master plan for the area.

One of the plans most important components, Van Milligen recalled, was mandatory inspections for all downtown buildings. This mandate required property owners to get their buildings up to code. For those who couldnt afford the necessary changes, the city developed an incentives program to ease the financial burden. Property owners who resisted the mandate were taken to court.

The condition of one downtown building, located on the northeast corner of Third and Main, proved so troubling that inspectors refused to enter the structure, fearing it might collapse while they were inside.

The building, which then housed Gentlemens Book Store, ultimately was torn down and rebuilt. Van Milligen said this was made possible by a multi-organization partnership, with the City of Dubuque, Greater Dubuque Development Corp. and the Dubuque Area Chamber of Commerce each signing on to occupy space in the structure.

Grover believes to this day that how the structure was rebuilt remains an important part of the character on Lower Main.

I think it was important that they embraced that historic architecture, Grover recalled. They realized that the historic landscape is important to this area, and they didnt try to go modern with the building. I think the historic landscape has really been a catalyst for this area.

IMPRESSIVE GROWTH

Approximately 15 years later, the chamber still occupies the northeast corner of Third and Main.

As Grover has watched the area develop, she attributes some of the success to the growth in the Port of Dubuque. She noted that the chamber building sits at the key point where the downtown district connects to that area via the Third Street bridge.

This is really the gateway to the Port of Dubuque, she said.

To Grover, the growth of Lower Main is indicative of a broader trend.

There is a sense of place and a sense of community that exists in the downtown, Grover said. There was a time in the 1980s when there was a mass exodus from downtowns everywhere. Now, it has kind of come full circle, where people are looking at the downtown as the heart of the community.

Kelly Williams, manager at Lower Main restaurant and bar 1st amp; Main, has witnessed the areas skyrocketing popularity firsthand.

Since 1st amp; Main opened its doors in August, Williams has been amazed by the response.

On a Friday and Saturday evening, theres no shortage of people to be found around this part of town, he said. Weve gotten a great response from the community, and I think that has really given us a sense of urgency.

Williams said an upcoming expansion will nearly double 1st amp; Mains square footage, allowing the business to add a traditional dining room on the ground floor and provide more space for private parties on the lower level.

Williams business has plenty of company in Lower Main, where new watering holes have popped up at a rapid pace.

Eronel, 285 Main St., opened its doors in February 2013. Owner Jeremy Patrum said Eronel prides itself on a wide selection of craft beers, as well as a diverse schedule of live music. Live performers, ranging from acoustic guitar players to full rock bands, perform two or more nights per week at the venue.

Patrum acknowledged that the neighborhood has played a key role in Eronels early success.

It helps that we are getting a lot of foot traffic, he said. We get a lot of business from bar-hopping, from the people who want to hit up several places in a night.

Additionally, in the past five years, Mason Dixon Saloon (opened in 2010) and Skinny Maginnys (opened in late 2013) have joined area mainstays Lot One, The Hub and Busted Lift in the bustling area.

GROWING CONCERNS

Not everyone has been pleased by the surge in bar business, however.

Casey Reekie represents the fourth generation of her family to own and operate Knippels Religious Goods, 129 Main St.

Her great-grandfather started the business on the corner of 17th Street and Central Avenue in 1900, before moving it to the 400 block of Main Street two years later.

Knippels Religious Goods moved to its current location in 1969. Within a decade, Reekie recalled, the stores surroundings had taken a turn for the worse.

It got very run down. … There were a lot of bums around, Reekie recalled.

After leaving Dubuque for a spell, Reekie returned to take over the store in 1994.

Dan LoBianco, executive director of Dubuque Main Street, recalled that the mid-1990s marked a period of grassroots growth for the downtown. Prior to the city lending its assistance in the early 2000s, the progress seen in the 1990s was defined by small improvements from individual property owners.

Reekie said these changes made a tangible difference in the Lower Main area, adding that many business owners formed a sense of community. She noted that many of the female business owners would pool their resources to plan events or pay for advertising.

When Reekie assesses her surroundings today, she does not feel that same sense of camaraderie with her neighbors.

With more than a half-dozen bars located within a block of her store, she feels like Lower Main has a reached a tipping point.

There is a delicate balance that a neighborhood should have — you want to have a certain percent restaurants, a certain percent retail, a certain percentage of office complexes, Reekie said. That balance is very much off down here.

Reekie, who rents out the space above her store, said she has lost tenants because of the noise. Sometimes the music from surrounding bars is so loud that hanging crucifixes fall off the wall, she said.

Dubuque Police Department spokesman Lt. Scott Baxter said police are aware of the propensity for problems in the district.

Obviously, at 2 am, when several bars are dismissing patrons all at once, there could be some issues, he said.

To stem these concerns, police try to maintain a steady presence in the area on its busier nights, often sending extra officers around closing time.

Baxter said it is not uncommon for police to make a few arrests on a weekend night, adding that the majority involve bar patrons who are being excessively loud, fighting or showing signs of extreme drunkenness.

Still, Baxter does not believe the Lower Main bar scene has gotten out of control.

Overall, from what I am seeing, there is more benefit (to the areas growth) than negatives, he said.

Reekie also noted that the presence of popular restaurants can result in a lack of parking, a phenomenon that is particularly noticeable during the lunch hour.

My customers cannot get near this area at lunch time, she said. In the last three years or so, it is really affecting my business. Ill have customers calling me from the car, saying they have been driving around for 10 minutes and still cant find a spot.

Rinda Wolff, owner of Flowers on Main, also cited the parking situation, saying the meters downtown do not make for a customer-friendly environment.

If you come downtown and get a parking ticket, it makes your $3 rise $10, she said.

NATIONAL EXPOSURE

Earlier this year, Lower Main made the leap to the national spotlight when Hotel Julien Dubuque was featured in two episodes of the popular reality television show The Bachelor.

The Dubuque establishment, which was built in 1915 and underwent a $33 million renovation completed in 2010, first appeared in a Feb. 16 episode. It later was featured in the March 9 season finale, viewed by 9.7 million people nationwide.

While the majority of filming took place within the hotel, the episodes also featured shots of Lower Main Street, as well as the Port of Dubuque.

Hotel General Manager Dwight Hopfauf said he was blown away by the impact of the exposure.

The numbers were just were astounding — just completely off the charts, Hopfauf said.

Figures tracked by hotel staff show that website visits increased 11-fold in the days leading up to and following the finale. On a typical day, the hotels website page views range from 1,000 to 1,500. Page views soared to 13,563 on the day of the finale.

Similar jumps were witnessed in the social media realm, with Facebook posts about the season finale reaching more than 153,000 users and the sites Twitter account seeing 11,000 impressions in March.

Since the airing of The Bachelor, approximately one in five people who book rooms at Hotel Julien have mentioned the show, Hopfauf said. Meanwhile, staffers still field calls about the hotels Bachelor package, which was launched just weeks after the season finale aired.

LoBianco said the exposure of the hotel is indicative of the diverse appeal of Lower Main.

I think that recently it has largely become our entertainment district, but it also has a lot of other things to offer, he said. Any popular area has to have some element of retail and we have that here — you have the restaurants, the hotels … it appeals to people in a lot of different ways.

To Hopfauf, the success of Hotel Julien Dubuque is tied in many ways to the broader success of Lower Main Street.

For the guests that come to the hotel, the most commonly asked questions are What is there to do? and Where can I eat? Hopfauf said. We are constantly referring them to things that are within walking distance. That is what a guest wants — to park their car and experience what is unique to Dubuque. They dont want to go to a chain restaurant.

After seeing the improvements in recent decades, LoBianco feels that the best times for Lower Main still might be ahead.

That area will always be an anchor for Dubuque, especially with the younger crowd, he said. I think you will see that district becoming even more popular moving forward.

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