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Mason has invested millions of dollars in infrastructure work and a facelift for downtown. The question now is, if they built it, will businesses come?

Mark Davis, principal at Hi-Five Development — whose firm made the first, big private investment in downtown by renovating the old Mason Municipal Building — wants to develop a project where Bauer Insurance and Angilos Pizza reside. That first included plans for a three-story building with shops on the bottom, office space in the middle and condos on top. He said he had hoped Mason would come up with some creative ways to make it economically feasible to build the building.

Now, however, he said it appears he'll be going it alone. City officials have said the city can't finance private developments.

With the economic and housing downturn, he said the condos are likely out of his plans, but he has had interest from a couple of banks who would like to locate on the corner where the Bauer building is. Until he gets some tenants, he won't break ground. He said he is obviously willing to invest in downtown, but he hopes others also will step up to the plate.

"One thing you are going to see is, all of a sudden the street becomes more valuable and some people, we're one of them, who would like to fix up the neighborhood will do that," he said. "But a lot of other people won't take any action. So what will happen is the perceived value of individual properties will escalate, and it will be more difficult for developers to buy up properties."

The city obtained grant money to help downtown businesses in the first phase and several businesses took advantage of the money by re-roofing, paving parking lots and other improvements.

Mayor Tom Grossmann said the city considered what Davis predicts might happen, but the will of council was to proceed with beautification efforts, rather than woo a developer into making wholesale changes. Grossmann said the project was driven by the downtown merchants.

However, Chet Mastalerz said political wills also have come into play, as evidenced by the recent shelving of the plaza clock tower, or "icon."

"We've been battling this for nine years. (Former mayor) Char Pelfrey came in and helped get this on track," he said. "But it takes so long and there have been so many changes on council."

Mastalerz said what would really help now is if the city would hire a replacement for Paige Rothstein, the former downtown small business coordinator. It was her job, he said, to apply for grants, woo new businesses and guide owners through the approval process.

Todd Hudson, who is opening The Wildflower Cafe and Coffee House on East Main Street, said he could have used someone like Rothstein to guide him through the processes. He had hoped to open last fall, but said jumping through the various city planning and zoning hoops has slowed him down.

"The problem I ran into is it seems like, because everything has just started the bugs haven't been worked out yet," he said.

Economic Development Director Michele Blair said she has posted a job notice to replace Rothstein, who moved away around Christmas time, but first she is concentrating on hiring an economic development manager, to help with the larger businesses. And as for the vacancies downtown?

"You will see some recirculation of businesses that work down there and some that don't. ... the ones that do work we want to help grow, and we want to help bring new interesting things down there as well."

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