Community leaders are taking charge in the city’s 2nd Ward to attract small businesses and to make it a more family and pedestrian friendly area.

The Central Avenue corridor between Martin Luther King Boulevard and Second Street could be revitalized block by block by cleaning up properties and encouraging economic development, according to Butch Hubble and Perry Shazier II, the two men who initiated the 2nd Ward Central Avenue project.

A retired Navy officer and a retired police officer, Hubble said he returned to Ohio and found the neighborhood “had gone downhill.”

“I realized we had to rejuvenate it and bring life back to the neighborhood,” he said.

Initial efforts led to the creation in March of a nonprofit board of 13 people, including Hubble and Shazier. The group’s goal is to attract gas stations, coffee and ice cream shops and other small businesses to draw families into the neighborhood and to create a more pedestrian friendly streetscape.

The team’s initial goal — to bring in two to three small businesses within an 18-month window that started in March — has been met, and a fourth business may soon be moving into the corridor, according to Hubble.

Those businesses include a restaurant, an insurance office and a clinic that could employ as many as 30 people. There has also been interest in opening a music store and a Hispanic grocery, he said.

There were about 16 vacant residential and commercial structures in the project’s corridor, he said.

“We want people to have a reason to stop, shop and get a bite to eat,” said Sherry McBee, a board member who is also assisting with the project’s public relations efforts. “It’s on a main corridor, the money and the audience is already here. A positive attitude with the neighborhood is important.”

Project leaders have reached out into the community with two public meetings at Pilgrim Baptist Church that attracted about 100 people each, according to Hubble.

“An astronomical amount of money in the millions leaves here and goes over to the West Side or to Bridgewater Falls,” Hubble said. “We want people to be able to walk to the store and buy groceries.”

He said there is a lot of potential to support small businesses, with Miami University Hamilton students, for example, who might use a coffee shop with Wi-Fi to study.

While the city is supportive of the effort and is willing to help provide incentives to those qualified business people, Hubble said, “we’re not looking for a handout. We want people to say we did this.”

Hubble said a major “hiccup” is bringing a number of residential homes up to city standards.

“We’ve got properties that are atrocious,” he said. “The absentee landlords have to work to fix it because you cannot have a beautiful home next to a rundown property. We have to do this one home at a time to get them all up to community standards.”

Twenty-three houses, 13 vacant lots and nine businesses received minor fix-ups in June, such as painting and landscaping, with the help of the city and a number of volunteers, according to Hubble.

The June cleanup was organized to “help residents with a little push,” McBee said.

“We’re hoping that it catches on,” she said.

There are negative community perceptions that also have to be battled, Hubble said.

Some view the Central Avenue corridor as unsafe, but Hubble said calls for police service are less that some other areas of the city that are better perceived.

The Central Avenue district had the third-lowest number for police calls of the city’s 12 districts, according to Hamilton police statistics for 2010.

Dennis Kurlas, a local entrepreneur who owns several restaurants in the area, said he faced some of the same challenges and stereotypes when he opened Riverbank Cafe in the Rossville/Main Street area.

Kurlas said the city’s Economic Development department was very supportive of their plans to open the restaurant. He said once the bridge project and the Courtyard by Marriott hotel were confirmed, that’s when they “pulled the trigger” to move forward five years ago.

“Once you get one person to commit, it’s like a snowball effect,” he said. “I would encourage a heavy hitter to commit who has the energy to make something happen there.”

Kurlas is bullish on Hamilton, saying the city is on “a cutting edge and in the next five years, things are really going to ‘pop. ’”

He said the changes in leadership are helping to raise the image of Hamilton.

“It still has a long way to go and it’s a process,” Kurlas said. “But Hamilton people are the most benevolent people around and they support local businesses.”

Michael Neal, owner of Neal’s Cafe, said the clean-up in June was a positive for the community.

“It makes us look business-friendly, and a key to small business is keeping its surroundings clean,” he said. “It’s also positive for the community to get people cleaning up their properties because it helps improve property values.”

Thomas Brown, a Central Avenue resident, said the neighborhood has a lot of positives.

“Anything is good if something positive goes into the neighborhood,” he said. “It helps with the morale of the people. This was a good neighborhood before and this is helping.”

Ebony Curry, who owns Phillips Barber Shop, said so far what he’s seen has been positive even though he’s cautiously optimistic.

“I hope this rejuvenates the businesses,” he said. “It will need a community effort but we need to see more community involvement… It’s a beginning and a start but we need to get everyone involved.”

From his well-kept Central Avenue home, Curt Bradbury said “it will be a good, worthwhile project if it comes to fruition.”

“It’s been slow lately but we hope to get this neighborhood to be like other neighborhoods,” he said.

Except for the four years he spent in the military, the 77-year-old said he’s seen more than a dozen other projects come and go over the past 10 to 20 years to revitalize the neighborhood. Bradbury believes it can work if there is effort put into it. He also said residents have to have pride where they live and the absentee landlords need to take care of their properties.

“I just hope I’m still alive to see something happen,” Bradbury said.