Stevens Point's Mayor says it's time to bring life back to the downtown area.

On Monday, Mayor Andrew Halverson proposed the revitalization plan of downtown and says making changes will help boost the dwindling downtown economy. The plan focuses on increasing retail, residential, and commercial space and Halverson says a Milwaukee-based company has been hired to develop a plan to capitalize on what is already there.

Halverson says, "The downtown has been struggling for many years especially with the introduction of a lot of big box retail along the interstate and it's taken a lot of the energy out of the retail sector of what downtown was for many years."

The plan proposes ideas including expansion of the waterfront, making downtown more pedestrian friendly, changing the structure of the mall, and restoring historic buildings. He says these are just preliminary ideas, but there's no question that it's going to happen. It's just a matter of finalizing decisions and moving forward.