A commercial design workshop is coming to Ames this weekend to examine the standards the city must follow when working on improvements or construction to the community.

“[Commercial design sets] guidelines saying where you can build, how to install landscape, how to construct parking lots and more,” said Brian O’Connell, the city’s planning and housing director. “We are working to make this city more appealing.”

The three main components of the community involved in organizing the workshop are the city government, Iowa State and the private sector businesses and residents. The workshop is intended to help inform city council members, zoners, staff and others about the commercial design guidelines for the Ames community.

“This workshop will hopefully create a community-wide awareness of the need for commercial design,” said Riad Mahayni, professor and chair of the commercial and regional planning department at ISU. “People will be able to see the speaker’s ideas and ideas from other cities.”

Tonight there will be a tour of Ames by bus to view some of the possible sights for design.

“The tour will focus on commercial districts,” said Dave Carter, a downtown businessman. “Anybody is welcome to come.”

There also will be a dinner tonight at 6 in the Campanile Room of the Memorial Union. It will give anyone interested in the workshop a chance to visit with the committee in an informal atmosphere, Carter said.

Four speakers with an experienced background in commercial design will be presenting at the workshop.

“Their presentations will offer an overview of the philosophy underlying design of commercial areas in the context of the rest of the city, relay experiences and case studies on the subject from other cities, and experience of community planners and developers in implementing such an approach,” Mahayni said.

One of the four speakers is Rich Beatty, a chief planner for Boston. Nan Hagen, who formerly lived in Ames, is a speaker representing the National Main Street Program. Michael Lander is a developer out of Minneapolis who has worked on commercial projects throughout the Midwest. The final presenter, Patricia Zingsheim, was a planner for the City of Des Moines.

All four of these speakers have national recognition and expertise and will be giving presentations at the workshop on Saturday beginning at 8 a.m. That afternoon there will be a panel discussion for guests to ask the committee and speakers questions.

The workshop will be held in the College of Design Atrium, and registration materials will be available at a later date.

This workshop follows the “Village Concept” workshop, which was held in Ames in 1996. The Sommerset Development project in north Ames stemmed from that workshop. The village concept focused more on residential development and planning, whereas this year’s workshop is striving to make the city’s commercial areas more attractive.

The village concept “generated a lot of interest, led to people being involved and implemented it,” Carter said. “It was educational and introduced people to new ideas and how it worked. Some have worked and some haven’t.”

The committee hopes this new workshop will formulate as many ideas for the city of Ames as the village concept workshop did and help the community in the process.