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Great Places: An Invitation to Iowa’s Future
They came by email and fax, typed on official city stationery, engraved on wedding stock and handwritten on the back of a spare piece of paper. They were short and sweet, and packed to the margins. And they all put to rest any notion that Iowans aren’t bursting with pride in all that is Iowa.
This
spring, the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with 18 state agencies,
issued a call for invitations to participate in a brand new initiative called
Iowa Great Places.
We received 145 invitations from 91 counties. If you want to take a trip to every corner of Iowa and all that’s in between, past, present and future, take a reading tour of our Great Places invitations (www.iowagreatplaces.gov).
Iowans were challenged to think about what is genuine and authentic about the place where they live, and what it would take to make that a great place. Great places have a special identity, and come in all sizes, urban and rural. So did our invitations.
They were as big as the 10-county Great River Road along the Mississippi, the length of the Loess Hills from Plymouth to Fremont Counties along the Missouri, and captured two tiers of counties on our southern border in the Historic Hills Corridor, from Clarke and Decatur to Van Buren. They envisioned the revitalization of historic corridors, like the White Pole Road, a historic trail marked by white poles, connecting Adair, Casey, Menlo, Stuart and Dexter.
They were compact, well-defined sections of our cities that see themselves as cultural magnets or shopping districts, like Beaverdale, East Village and Ingersoll in Des Moines, and Sioux City’s Floyd Boulevard market that wants to attract people with authentic, locally-grown organic food.
Some invitations came from small towns that have experienced rebirth before and are confident they can do it again. Pomeroy was “nearly wiped off the face of the earth by a devastating tornado in 1893,” writes Denita Luke. “The spirit of the people prevailed,” she continues. And now the community has a new vision to attract artisans to live and work in Pomeroy making it a cultural destination. Riceville survived a fire that destroyed the town in 1901. It wants to reclaim its place as Gateway to Mitchell County.
Olin would like a town square, instead of the vacant lot in the middle of town. City Clerk Jean McPherson envisions benches, bike racks, picnic tables and a fountain as an inviting resting spot for hikers and cyclists who travel a nearby trail.
Albia, which has one of the few town squares on the National Register of Historic Places, wants to focus now on Buxton and its mining history, recreating an authentic experience, with train rides and a trip down a coal shaft.
Lake City has “everything but a lake,” but knows how to “dream big and deliver on those dreams,” writes Paul Iverson.
Iowans seem perfectly content without the proverbial “mountains and oceans.” They write of the vineyards and wine country in Avoca, musical heritage in Mason City and Clear Lake, an equestrian paradise in Warren County and the “golfing, camping, picnicking, paddling, shooting, birding, hiking, hunting, biking…” in the "Outdoor Family Zone" in Northwest Polk County.
Iowans know that a great quality of life is essential if we are going to keep or lure back our talented young people. And our young people must think so too. They are behind a number of our Great Places invitations. U of I Student Body President Mark Kresowik is the primary contact for the Creative Corridor invitation. The Young Professionals group authored the invitation from Ft. Dodge. And the ISU Greek Community wants to build a better relationship with Ames and Campustown as a Great Place.
What’s next? Coaches are being dispatched to every place that submitted a Great Places invitation. They will work with the local teams to move the vision forward. In October, the Great Places Citizens Advisory Board will select three pilot places to be part of our learning laboratory, in which the state will discover coordinated, focused ways to deliver technical and financial assistance to deliver powerful results. Every one of the 145 places that extended an invitation to Great Places will benefit from this initiative, through the coaching process, new training opportunities and the chance to come together as a community and focus on the future.
That’s happening already. In Davenport, which calls itself Iowa’s front porch. In Council Bluffs, where Donna Kinney writes, “Here I am, just another Iowan who loves to brag about the beautiful hills, trails and of course the friendly people who live here in Council Bluffs, Iowa.” Iowans have set aside their signature modesty, thought about what’s good and great about our state, and with the brass of 76 trombones, blown their own horns. That takes confidence, creativity and vision. And that is the first step toward transforming what’s good to Great Places in Iowa.
