After Tuesday night’s meeting between concerned members of the south Campustown neighborhood, vice president of business and finance Warren Madden and director of Intercollegiate Athletics Jamie Pollard, one thing is clear: The university has done work and made an awful lot of compromises.

But — and this is especially true of neighbors and of living together with people in a community like Ames — we’re all going to have to make concessions, compromises and sacrifices before this is all said and done.

It seems clear to us that renovating the Southwest Athletic Complex isn’t a viable option. The additional costs would surely set the project back years, if not indefinitely, and Iowa State’s student athletes deserve a place to play; these programs deserve a place to call home.

There seems to be a fear among some in the community that the university won’t do its due diligence in keeping the residents of Ash Avenue and Lynn Avenue, to the east, from being in even more dire straits when the rainy season arrives in a few months. 

There might be cause for that sentiment, but everything we’ve heard and seen from the university’s representatives to date leads us to believe that their intention is to do their part by upholding the Department of Natural Resources’ standards they’re required to meet, and by adding the city’s ordinances on top of their plans. They’re doing this voluntarily, for the sake of being good neighbors to the residents of that area. 

Certainly, we’ll all be keeping a close eye on the proposal set before the Board of Regents in March and the plans the engineers over at RDG Planning & Design come up with for the site, to make sure they do, in fact, hold to their promises and keep the problems from getting any worse. 

And we’re interested to see whether the city follows the university’s lead in the coming months and takes the opportunity to rectify what neighbors are labeling a “terrible situation.”

But if Tuesday night’s meeting should have told us anything, it’s that, when concerned students, faculty, staff and community members gather together to voice their concerns, the university takes note and adjusts its plans accordingly in order to arrive at a solution truly in the best interests of Iowa State, Ames and the state of Iowa.