Detroit is finalizing plans to revamp seven business corridors across the city this spring as part of a $125 million campaign to breathe life into its neighborhoods. A request for proposals for the projects will be released later this month.

Dozens of city blocks, from the Livernois "Avenue of Fashion" to the heart of Mexicantown, are set to be overhauled into pedestrian-friendly plazas and greenways to encourage the type of "comeback" energy seen downtown and in Midtown. The designs, drawn up after dozens of community meetings, reimagine long-struggling retail centers that have the potential to be revitalized.

"We started around 2016 to look at what (these areas) could become," said Caitlin Marcon, deputy director of the complete streets division in the city's department of public works. "We had the concepts and went to community engagement starting the end of 2017."

The city hired an assortment of firms to assist with design of the streets, including engineering companies WSP and Fishbeck, Thompson Carr & Huber Inc., which have offices in Detroit, and Detroit-based SmithGroup, New Orleans-based Spackman, Mossop and Micheals LLC and Boston-based Utile Architecture & Planning.

Each of the seven initial projects are expected to start this spring and involve phased construction expected to be done by 2020. In total, there are 23 projects in the pipeline to be completed by 2022, coinciding with completion of the bond issued to fund the overhauls. The scope and timeline of the other 16 projects remains undetermined.

Mayor Mike Duggan announced the streetscape initiative in October 2017 as a large chunk of the $125 million plan to beautify 22 miles of storefronts in 23 neighborhoods across the city. His administration has claimed that the investment could help recapture $2.6 billion that residents spend outside of the city.

Construction work was to begin late last year, but the city says it held off in part to avoid weather disruptions.

"As with any design process there can be delays," Marcon said in an email. "Rather than rush to begin a project in late 2018 with risk of not completing it before winter, we made the call to delay all work to the spring."

Marcon declined to give budgets for each project, saying that costs will not be finalized until the work is bid out.

The following are projects scheduled for the spring.