Downtown Champaign, IL 4K - Sunset Drive

Downtown Champaign drains into Boneyard Creek, which feeds the Saline Branch of the Salt Fork Vermilion River. In the 1980s, part of the downtown Champaign area (Neil St.) was closed to vehicular traffic to create a pedestrian mall, but this short-lived experiment was scrapped when business declined. As part of a revitalization effort, One Main Development constructed two new mixed-use buildings: One Main and M2 on Neil. The City of Champaign gave $3.7 million in tax incentives for the building of M2 and agreed to pay nearly $11 million for a new parking deck. This growth in downtown Champaign coincided with the larger growth of the "north Prospect" shopping district on the city's northern boundary. The growth in the north Prospect area relied, in part, on leapfrogging, moving out to the countryside and developing more remote farmland that eventually connects to the main development. Given the overwhelming success of such suburban shopping areas nationally, new development within any city center represented an alternative to the dominant movement out and away from the cities. In April 2007, One Main Development broke ground on M2 on Neil, a nine-story, $40 million, mixed-use project – the largest ever for downtown Champaign – located at the corner of Neil and Church Street. M2 on Neil features retail and office space, and 50 upscale condominiums. The project was expected to be complete in late 2008, but experienced delays in construction, partially due to $5 Million in mechanics liens filed against One Main Development, as well as a large fire on an adjacent property that caused substantial facade damage to M2. Construction on the commercial shell and core and the residences was completed in the Summer of 2009. New condo owners began moving into M2 in April 2009 and the first ground-floor tenant, a branch of local BankChampaign, opened its doors on November 2009. Destihl, a restaurant, and brewpub, opened in Spring 2011, and two other restaurants opened in ground-floor space in Fall 2011. The City of Champaign has constructed a six-story parking structure on Hill Street adjacent to M2, intended to serve the greater Downtown; it was completed in May 2009. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champai... In this video, we drive down a few of the main streets in Downtown Champaign including Neil Street, Randolph Street, State Street, and Main Street. The video starts on Springfield Ave. heading toward State St. Taken: 9/4/19 at 6:52pm Timestamps: 1:43 - Springfield Ave. and Neil St. 4:09 - Walnut St. and Columbia Ave. 4:39 - Columbia Ave. and Neil St. 6:25 - Champaign City Building (Neil St. and University Ave.) 8:14 - Springfield Ave. and Randolph St. 9:45 - Hill Street Parking Garage (Randolph St. and Hill St.) 11:52 - State St. and Springfield Ave. 13:54 - Market St. and University Ave. 17:02 - Historic Virginia Theatre (Park Ave. and Randolph St.) 20:18 - Leaving Downtown towards Midtown (University Ave. and Chestnut St.)