The creation of a town square is one of several suggestions to be presented to the Ames City Council as a result of the Ames downtown charrette.

“This project is still in its brainstorming stages,” said Matt Flynn, director of the Ames Planning and Housing Department. “We have evaluated feedback from Ames citizens, community members and students, and they will most likely be incorporated in the implementation phase.”

The final decision-making process, however, ultimately lies with the City Council, Flynn said.

If approved, the catalyst project would be the creation of a town square, which would be located in front of City Hall, where its parking lot currently stands, said Peter Musty, spokesman for Charrette Center Town Design of Minneapolis, Minn., the managing company for the Ames charrette.

A new, revitalized civic plaza would signify the “center of Ames” and would be one of the most important components to a “new” City of Ames, Musty said.

Musty said as many of the concerns as possible expressed by community members and students were considered during the drafting of the model for the new town center and the overall revitalization process.

“The Ames downtown area currently does not offer Ames community members with a complete experience,” Musty said.

“The downtown business district needs to improve to become more competitive with a new mall or the businesses along South Duff.”

Attaining the overall goals defined by the city will be challenging, largely because of limited resources, Musty said. With such a “rich model” and community support, a revitalized downtown businesses sector is definitely achievable, Musty said.

One suggestion to accomplish this would be to have downtown businesses open their doors and maintain longer business hours during city festivals and holidays, when there are more people walking through the downtown area, Musty said.

He also suggested encouraging peer pressure on downtown businesses to adopt better management practices, inspired by the direction and example of the City of Ames.

Musty said although all of these goals are in the planning stages, one thing the city could act on immediately would be providing community members with free WiFi Internet access in Ames’ city parks as well as putting in new public art.

Students have played an active role in the charrette, Flynn said.

“We’ve seen excellent participation from students,” he said. “There have been ISU students participating every night.

Some say that students’ participation could have been better, though, in particular with the interviewing process to suggest new directions or ideas for the City of Ames to take.

“Very few students participated in the interviewing process, even though the city invited all students to participate,” said Anthony Borich, senior in community and regional planning. “In the evening meetings, many students who have been coming were doing so as part of class assignments, not voluntarily. I would have liked to have seen additional students participate voluntarily.”

The charrette project was overall “minimally successful” in involving students, Borich said.

Students’ heightened participation is likely the result of the successful efforts by both the university and City of Ames in pursuing the “one community” idea, said Todd Ellensohn, freshman in agronomy.

“Strengthening, in the sense of the university and City of Ames working together, is very important,” Ellensohn said.