After a summer of community discussion and input, the committee in charge of recommending design standards for a proposed new mall will present its findings to the public Monday.

Members of the Steering Committee expect to receive community feedback after their presentation, which could be used to regulate the type of construction done on the proposed shopping center site at 13th Street and Interstate 35, said Jeffrey Johnson, a development representative.

During the summer months, the committee developed recommendations for areas such as landscaping, lighting and building design in the East 13th Street Gateway Overlay District. The recommended design standards will be presented to the Ames City Council on Sept. 14, said Ray Anderson, Ames city planner.

“The design standards are not geared to just the mall,” Anderson said. “They will be applied to whatever is built there.”

Committee members Johnson, Jim Cooper and Jim Gregory were selected by the committee to present the recommended design standards and shared interests to the public and to the Ames City Council, Anderson said.

“Based on public input, if there is any new information, the committee has the right to come back together and incorporate [the ideas] into the recommendations,” Johnson said.

The committee was formed with two representatives from each of eight community focus groups and a representative from Wolford Development Inc., the developer hoping to build a mall. With help from city of Ames staff, ideas from the focus groups were arranged into categories and later refined into shared interests and design standards, Anderson said.

To assign priority rankings, committee members were asked to vote for three design standards under each shared interest that they strongly approved and one they strongly disapproved. A disapproving vote counted against the tallied score for a design standard. Some design standards received partial votes when members applied a single vote to two or three design standards with similar wording, Johnson said.

“We’ve been up front with all outputs,” Johnson said. “The design standards and votes are [on the Ames City Government Web site], so everyone can see what the committee thought through. It’s important to see where there is broad support and where there is some questioning.”

Committee members strongly supported the design standard requiring retail commercial development to appear as a unified project, according to the recommended design standards. The committee also supported a requirement for a buffer strip between the north property line and the Ketelsen Marsh and a requirement for the city to operate a “Welcome Center” or kiosk.

Some committee members disagreed with a design standard requiring the lighting to be less than the Ames Outdoor Lighting Code currently allows so that light pollution to the sky and Ketelsen Marsh are minimized. Members also disagreed with a design standard prohibiting linear “commercial-strip development” in the area.

The Steering Committee will meet again in late September or early October to discuss the community’s feedback. City staff will prepare a proposed ordinance to adopt the design standards, Anderson said.

The public presentation will be on at 7 p.m. Monday in the Farwell T. Brown Auditorium at the Ames Public Library, 515 Douglas Ave. The City Council presentation will be at 6 p.m. Sept. 14 in the City Council chambers. All of the meetings are open to the public.