During yesterday’s tour, Lorraine Provencher, of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council, stops to admire paintings by Karole Nicholson, being exhibited in the Blackstone River Theatre Gallery at 549 Broad St., in Cumberland.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

PAWTUCKET — The white charter bus turned onto Barton Street, a residential road across from the former train station that had for decades been a notorious red-light district, rife with prostitutes and drug dealers and addicts.

The contingent of state, federal and local officials –– directors, executives, presidents and an assortment of other titles –– peered through the bus windows. It was just before 2 p.m. yesterday.

From her seat in the middle of the bus, Nancy Whit, of the Pawtucket Citizens Development Corporation, pointed out the changes that have brought about the neighborhood’s turnaround.

The community garden on the corner of Nickerson and Broad streets that opened in 2004. A small playground, opened this year, on what was once the site of an auto-repair shop. Callaghan Gardens, a row of 14 condominiums priced for low- to moderate-income households, opened in 2004.

The redevelopment projects, combined with the efforts of a community activist to get the prostitutes off the streets, have resulted in a decline in the prostitution arrest rate, Whit reported.

For a growing group of local leaders, Barton Street represents the transformation happening in the area just north of downtown Pawtucket and stretching into the centers of Central Falls and Cumberland.

Officials have taken to calling this area the Broad Street corridor, after the main throughway that passes through the three communities. The municipalities and area organizations are trying to come up with a regional planning project that would set the course for revitalizing the main street and its surroundings.

Yesterday, the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council hosted a three-hour bus/walking tour beginning at Cumberland’s Blackstone River Theater and taking officials into downtown Pawtucket.

Those present included Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts; Saul Kaplan, executive director of the state Economic Development Corporation; Mark S. Hayward, district director of the federal Small Business Association; Paul Ouellette of the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce; and Jan Reitsma, executive director of the Blackstone Valley National Heritage Corridor, as well as government officials from the three communities.

BROAD STREET is a three-mile stretch of road from Main Street in Pawtucket to Mendon Road in Cumberland that includes a mix of independent businesses, multifamily residences, churches, schools, industries and parks.

The street has links to the region’s long history and also its present, say supporters. The area’s first settler, William Blackstone, homesteaded in Cumberland between the road and the shores of the river that bears his name.

Today the street is an important center for the 102,000 people that live among the three communities. It is home to more than 500 properties valued at about $170 million, according to the tourism council.

Last year, the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council and the three municipalities formed a cooperative focused on Broad Street. It received a $50,000 from the National Park Service to develop a plan for revitalization and each community committed $10,000 to the effort.

The challenges for revitalization are many –– from crime to securing the financial investments necessary for some of the larger undertakings –– but there is potential to make the road the next major centerpiece of the region, say officials.

Earlier this year, the council hosted a community forum to hear from residents and local business owners about what issues the cooperative should take on.

It has enlisted a consulting firm to establish an action plan based on the suggestions. It set up a Web site — www.broadstreetexperience.com — tracing the plan’s development.

Now the council is planning another community forum, tentatively set for early next month, to talk about some of its ideas.

“At the last forum, people identified real issues for us, like crime issues and the fact that there are no trash cans on the streets. So we’ve come up with some concepts, and we want to run it by the community to see if we’re on target,” says Alex Sommer, who is coordinating the tourism council’s efforts.

AS THE COHORT of about 20, dressed in crisp white shirts and suits, crisscrossed the busy road in Central Falls early yesterday afternoon, onlookers took notice.

There, Broad Street is home to a growing number of small businesses and restaurants as well as the city’s main park, Jenks, and a charter school. In the densely Latino community, 84 percent of the businesses along the street are Latino owned.

Residents and store patrons came out to see what the commotion was. A passerby assumed the group was looking into immigration issues.

At La Casa del Pueblo, owner Domingo Mora told the group of how he initially opened his restaurant as a typical American-style breakfast eatery before expanding into fare from his native Mexico.

In his second year in operation, he said the restaurant has seen more non-Latinos customers. The shootings of two teens in the city this month had slowed business recently, he noted.

“We need more promotion to bring new customers,” he told the group.

Eugenio Givau, owner of Tropical Grill and Lounge, a Cape Verdean establishment located next door, said that he had invested money to expand his restaurant, which also features live music on weekends, and like other owners, hoped to make further improvements.

“My goal is to stay here,” he said as construction crews erected the frame of a future auto-parts store and a dollar discount store complex next to his restaurant.

The group lunched at La Sopresa, a Colombian restaurant and bakery farther down the road, where owner Adriana Moncada served plates of beans and rice, chicken, beef empanadas and cups of passion fruit juice.

Ouellette, of the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce, says he had never stepped into the restaurants the group visited until yesterday. He was impressed by the cultural diversity the closely located restaurants represented.

Those three restaurants, and at least seven others along the road, are taking part in a food tour that the tourism council is sponsoring every Wednesday evening for 10 weeks this summer.

Said Ouellette: “The common theme, it seems, is that all these owners want to see their businesses grow.”

pmarcelo@projo.com