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Hopkins Real Estate
Since the Second World War, Hopkins has worked through several self-images. Prewar, it was a freestanding workingman's town, marked by a large industrial plant a few blocks south of Downtown. As metropolitan growth engulfed the historic town in the 1950s, Hopkins grappled with how to differentiate itself from the encircling postwar suburbs. Converting Main Street to a semi-pedestrian mall in the 1970s proved not to be the answer. By the 1990s, the New Urbanism fashion offered another solution: replicating a 1920s Main Street. This was successful, in part because Hopkins could build from its substantial remaining prewar townscape.
The New Urbanism formula called for mixed use. Along with conventional existing businesses, some of which disappeared in the transformation, Main Street, now renamed Mainstreet, acquired antiques shops, restaurants, a performing arts facility, and a discount cinema.