‘Where people want to be’

In an effort to create a “place people want to be” and to drive economic development, a street-scaping committee for Uptown Creston has been formed.

“Street-scaping is essentially landscaping for the urban environment. It applies the principles of design to all aspects of a street: Sidewalks, curbs, street paving, bump-outs, parking, plants, trees, benches, trashcans, signage, accessibility, art and more,” said Brian Zachary, owner of Create Creston. “People respond well to a unified design concept even if they do not know why. They stay longer and spend more money. The intent is to have a neighborhood of small shops that are walkable by all ability people.”

Creston Mayor Gabe Carroll said by enhancing the city’s Uptown business district, not only it will it create an area people want to visit, but a place businesses want to operate.

“Essentially, a lot of what this committee or sub-committee has been looking at and implementing through the UCDA ... are the same thing that Main Street Iowa communities are doing,” said Carroll.

Main Street Iowa is an economic development program that helps communities capitalize on its unique identity, assets and character of its historic commercial districts. The Main Street approach consists of implementing a strategy-driven framework that guides community-based downtown revitalization efforts through the broader areas of economic, vitality, organization, promotion and design, similar to the efforts of the Union County Development Association.

“Even through we are not enrolled in that program ... we are implementing a lot of the components of what Main Street Iowa does,” he said.

“We’re just dreaming big for the Uptown and taking it by section knowing what the end goal is,” said Mindy Stalker, Talent Development Director of the UCDA.

The UCDA has been leading the charge in partnership with SICOG, the City of Creston, David Marroquin, urban planner of Common Ground, and area business partners on Uptown’s revitalization efforts. With the UCDA’s initiative – Update Uptown, a project under the Discover UC committee – the goal is to generate lost tax revenue within the city’s core, which has the highest tax valuation per acre in the city.

“That means you have compact, dense, buildings that are served by the same street, the same infrastructure, so your cost per building is very low because you’re only paying for services of that little section of street, that little section of sidewalk, that little section of piping, sewer and that kind of stuff,” said Carroll.

Carroll said, if one was to add up all the property in the downtown, the value per acre is worth more than the property that Walmart owns in town.

“A lot of people don’t realize that because they see that Walmart pays a lot of taxes, but Walmart uses way more police services than our downtown does that cost money. ... If you take the total amount of land that they own there, including their parking lot and their store and everything else, their tax value per acre is lower than everything in our downtown. And this is after 40 years of neglect in our downtown,” said Carroll. “Imagine if we built up our downtown and reinvested in that area, you can imagine how much more productive that would be for tax value.”

Carroll said he sat down and wrote down the value of every single building in Creston’s Uptown district and the total area each occupies, which helped him see the district’s tax revenue potential.

“So it doesn’t make any sense to invest your money anywhere else,” he said.

Jeremy Rounds of Southern Iowa Council of Governments said part of the Update Uptown committee’s role is to “be the sustainable driver to keep these things moving.”

As a member of the Update Uptown committee, Rounds said the street-scaping sub-committee is focused on smaller beautification projects that support the committee’s vision of creative place-making, such as the installation of shade trees, benches, additional public art, pocket parks and lighting.

Rounds’ has worked in partnership with UCDA on many projects. He is currently involved with SICOG’s Uptown Facade project. He currently serves on the Union County Historic Preservation Commission, which is exploring the potential of adding nearly 60 Uptown buildings to the National Register of Historic Places.

“The benefit of the registry is more recognition and funding for renovations,” said Rounds.

The situation that has happened in Creston’s uptown is not unique. Carroll said it’s a situation experienced by many small towns as developers have prioritized the automobile over people.

“Incentivization has been focused, not on rehabilitation, but on building new and generating more tax value,” said Carroll. “What we tend to do is we tend to chase tax value at the expense of future obligations.”

While Carroll said it’s nice to build the infrastructure and offer tax breaks to attract new business, what people fail to see is the obligation of repairing that infrastructure in 20 to 40 years.

“So it ends up costing more to build out there than if we would have just reinvested in our downtown. So now there’s been a real focus ... of reinvesting in your core areas,” he said.

Carroll said the plan to reinvest in the Uptown Creston is on point, focusing on beautification first and event planning second.

”And then the business will pick up,” said Carroll. “Downtown is the only place in Creston where start-up business can happen. There just isn’t affordable space anywhere else (in town).”

To view an urban design vision created by David Marroquin, visit www.one-common-ground.com. For more information on the Union County Development Association’s business resources and community projects, visit www.unioncountyiowa.com.