West Main Street in the West Main Hill Neighborhood
A community-submitted Section 106 Success Story in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
photo by: Google Street View
A Google Street View of West Main Street in Kalamazoo, Michigan adjacent to the Mountain Home Cemetery.
It was a complete and appropriate Section 106 process, a Michigan Department of Transportation project that was to be carried out using federal funding. The process benefitted the community by allowing public input from the neighborhood, the City of Kalamazoo and local history experts, as well as local Historic Preservation Commissioners, all of whom had one or more opportunities to help determine the outcome.
As the City of Kalamazoo grew, West Main Street ran east-west through the middle of town, eventually becoming its main thoroughfare and part of a state trunkline which today extends from South Haven, Michigan, along an irregular eastward route east to Webberville, souteast of Lansing at its east end. The section of the road that was under study ran roughly west from downtown Kalamazoo, traveling up West Main Hill, to or nearly to the township boundary.
Through a Section 106 consultation in the 1980s, West Main Street in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which had been proposed to go from four 10-foot lanes (2 in each direction) to five wider 12-foot lanes (2 in each direction and a turning lane) as it passes through our 1849 Mountain Home Cemetery and what is now the West Main Hill National Register Historic District, and which would have had negative impacts on both resources, was resolved after a thorough Section 106 process that led to an agreement that instead of the original proposal, four 11-foot lanes were built.
What Would Have Been Lost
As originally proposed, the project would have impinged on City Parkland, Mountain Home Cemetery, and private property along the neighborhood side of the route. That neighborhood was the City's first landscaped residential development and an important second ring suburb, which, in addition to its National Register designation, is also today a City of Kalamazoo Local Historic District. If enacted, the July 2026 proposed changes to the Section 106 regulations by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation would not involve community input until much later in the process, if at all, likely resulting in a larger roadway that would have impacted the adjacent neighborhood.
The process was completed. The neighborhood in particular had serious concerns about the increased speeds and potential for more accidents. These concerns and all others were heard and recorded, and suggestions were solicited before final decisions were made and agreement was reached.
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