IISC program potential resource for beautifying Colfax corridor

Jasper County’s seven Hometown Pride communities each submitted a handful of project proposals to the University of Iowa in an effort to partner with the school through the Iowa Initiative Sustainable Communities program.

IISC is a learning program at UI that partners with communities across Iowa to develop and complete projects while providing academic experiences. Submissions from Iowa communities will be accepted through the end of January and UI will selected two communities to partner with for a two-year period.

Jasper County’s community coach Jeff Davidson said UI will have a decision by March. If admitted into the program, 12 to 15 of the 22 proposals submitted by the seven Jasper County Hometown Pride communities will then be selected as future UI projects.

“The idea is to bring in some research assistance from the university. Some of these UI departments are really nationally renowned in terms of some of the research they’re doing and we would love to be able to use some of that in our hometown pride committee,” Davidson said.

One of Colfax’s proposals is to create a redevelopment plan for the area near the Interstate 80 interchange 155 and Highway 117 entering Colfax. Hometown Pride Committee member Doug Garrett said the city could benefit from beautifying the area, as it is the first area tourists typically see when entering the town.

“Right now there are parts that are OK and parts that just don’t look all that pretty. We’d like to work on the streetscape to develop the whole way, not just putting up trees but putting up a widened sidewalk so you can walk from town out to the new park,” Garrett said.

Colfax is already in the early stages of receiving assistance from Iowa State University in streetscaping the north entryway to downtown following a recent envisioning grant. ISU also helped in the initial designing of North Park, which could be a huge asset for tourism in the future.

Colfax would also like to look at the development of a senior team to assist the Colfax-Mingo School District in teaching of students.

That is also one of the four proposals of Baxter’s Hometown Pride Committee. Other plans Baxter proposed include the development of a community youth center and increased marketing of the Chichaqua Valley Trail.

If accepted into the two-year program Davidson said Baxter could greatly benefit from the school’s marketing expertise to help place Chichaqua Valley Trail further on the map, which would ultimately attract more tourism to Baxter.

“Now that it connects to the Des Moines metro system we should have a lot heavier traffic on it than we do now. A lot of the issue is that people just aren’t aware of it because there’s such an extensive trail system now in the Des Moines area,” Davidson said. “That’s the kind of stuff where you really need the expertise.”

The housing market is also a key area to consider for many small communities near a larger metro area like Des Moines.

Baxter and Colfax — along with Newton, Monroe and Prairie City — have proposed to conduct housing market analyses through UI to asses the adequacy of housing products if chosen by the university. Davidson said the purpose of this is to appeal to the Des Moines metro employment market.

“A lot of towns in Jasper County have family homes or single apartments,” Davidson said. “What we need to do, if there’s a need to create duplexes or something like that, we need to try to find developers to build that kind of housing in places like Baxter, Colfax and Prairie City so we can draw people to those communities.

“I can go from Des Moines to Prairie City in 25 minutes. It really is an easy commute. What we need to do is get these towns on the radar of the people making these decisions about where they are going to live if they’re working in Des Moines, but don’t want to live there.”

The Prairie City Hometown Pride Committee drew up two other proposals for the IISC project including the examination of how to improve the relationship between the town of Prairie City and Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge.

The refuge is one of Prairie City’s biggest assets when it comes to tourism. It recently installed bike lanes on the four-mile road entering the the refuge from Highway 163 to become more connected with the city and the trails around town.

Prairie City's Hometown Pride committee proposes the city, with the help of UI, examine how to better that relationship.

Another IISC proposal is, with the help of UI, to examine the operation of the EMS and police departments in both Prairie City and Monroe. The committee would also want to examine how to improve the efficiency of the EMS and police departments of both communities.

Each city's police department has one chief, two full-time officers and a handful of part-time officers. As for fire and EMS crew members, they are primarily volunteers.

Contact Alex Olp at aolp@jaspercountytribune.com