Michigan Avenue in Chicago, San Francisco's Market Street, Fifth Avenue in Manhattan — great cities have some great streets.

In downtown Dallas, we have some fine thoroughfares. Ross Avenue comes to mind. But if you could pick one downtown street with the most bang for your block, what would it be?

Longtime local architect Bob Ikel is pounding the pavement with a plan to make Elm Street Dallas' main drag.

He thinks the 2-mile stretch of Elm running west from Deep Ellum is a way to connect the dots in downtown's redo.

"Elm Street has the opportunity to be a great street," Ikel said. "It would link up downtown's key points.

"I'm trying to show light on the potential."

Elm Street certainly has history and geography on its side.

Elm connects Deep Ellum and the huge Baylor Scott & White medical complex with downtown's old financial district and the historic West End.

In the early 20th century, it was Dallas' entertainment capital, with rows of brightly lit movie houses, restaurants and bars. On the east end of the street in Deep Ellum, Elm Street was a center for Dallas' black community with a history of blues and jazz.

One of the biggest downtown-area real estate projects, the Epic complex, is under construction with two new high-rises at Elm and Good-Latimer Expressway. The development includes preservation of the historic Knights of Pythias Temple, a landmark building designed by one of the region's first black architects.

Major building redos on Elm downtown, including Thanksgiving Tower and the former First National Bank Tower, are bringing hundreds more workers and residents to the street.

And the West End has seen a resurgence with new office centers.

Ikel's big idea is to give Elm Street a face-lift with new sidewalks, landscaping and perhaps even a trolley line to tie things together.

"I'm talking about embracing the street and making it more pedestrian- and bike-friendly," he said. "It's the thing that's going to attract big companies downtown."

He means big companies like Amazon, which is looking for someplace to plop down its planned second headquarters.

Ikel doesn't see Amazon's planned 50,000-job HQ2 as a necessary ingredient for downtown.

"I'd rather have 500 companies with 100 or less jobs than Amazon," he said. "We could make downtown Dallas an innovation center.

"Downtown has what the millennials want. We don't need to be Amazon's next company town."