We head to the southern edge of the Bluegrass region for today's Monday's on main series.

Danville is the seat of Boyle County and home to well-known institutions like Center College, the Pioneer Playhouse, the Kentucky School for the Deaf and the Art Center of the Bluegrass, which is undergoing a major expansion.

City leaders hope that expansion, along with a large streetscape project set to be completed next month, will help drive business into Danville.

Over the past decade, if the devil's really.

It's actually not changed that much.

It's not change like a lot of other cities have, which I think is actually a good thing.

We've we've kept our character that we've always had, but now it's poised to change a lot.

The city developed a down payment, a plan started in 2019, but a big emphasis on the downtown master plan was to almost expand our downtown, like growing out and thicken it up a little bit to create more inventory.

Because there's a there is a there's a demand for space.

We did a project we thought would would really attract more people downtown.

For me, it's a town with nine lives.

It has like it continues to have different cycles of revitalization in a really exciting way.

And this current one is a really big one for us.

Our main street seems like it's been decades since we've been as exuberant as we are right now.

So we bought this building about 20 years ago from from the city.

The city purchased it back from us with a 100 year lease $1 a year.

The city has been a pretty amazing partner to us.

We just purchased the building next door to us, which is another historical Danville building, and we had the same set up with the city again with the expansion over into the new building.

This space is turning into the National Glass Museum.

One of the things we're really excited about being the arts center of the bluegrass right here in downtown Danville is we are amongst some amazing restaurants and shops and businesses here that support the local community and really make it a thriving economic center for Kentucky.

We are an Italian restaurant, but we're also an Italian restaurant in the heart of Kentucky.

So we do a lot of your classics, like you're going to find your Spaghetti and Meatballs, your Fettuccine, Alfredo and things of that sort.

Opening in Danville specifically, there was really no other option for us.

We had talked to a few different places and looked at some buildings and then we were like, Let's just stay home.

The way that Danville accepted us at Copper and Oak with open arms and they supported us.

We decided that we were definitely going to do it here.

To make this project success, you know, we're going to need the whole community to be on board with reinvigorating downtown.

Um, you know, it has disrupted business just the whole project.

I mean, we were, we rebuilt the entire main core of downtown and, you know, we kept businesses doors open and we kept traffic flowing.

So since being here and being a business owner in downtown, it doesn't come without its hardships.

You know, as anyone has been able to look around.

We've been under construction for a while.

And though that has had its growing pains, we see that so many people are coming back and they are complementing the work that's happening.

And and watching the restaurant scene explode.

And the small businesses, if you look downtown a lot, we have a new boutique that's about to open this week, actually, and another restaurant that's coming in a couple of months.

And so that growth and seeing so many people from outside of Danville come in and they're like, wow, this place has changed since 15 years ago or 20 years ago.

It's great to know that we are a part of that progress and pushing forward.

Dan Volz, A streetscape project cost $6 million.

The city plans to have a ribbon cutting ceremony in early November to kick off the holiday shopping season.