Cedar Rapids Gazette: Marion Uptown Streetscape Story:

Marion seeking ideas on Uptown Streetscape

The city of Marion wants your input on the future of its Uptown District; Wednesday night was the first night for meetings in Marion to discuss the future of it.

Nick Bowden, Community Planner and Partner of Community Redesigned, which is working with the city of Marion on their planned updates says they want to broaden the perspective of what uptown is and what it can be.

“This project,” he says, “Is a very detailed look at the uptown core and historic area of the community.”

Bowden says they are looking at any detail that is with in the boundaries of uptown Marion including; traffic, sidewalks, streets, etc. as well as the over all design of the area.

“This is the first critical step in the project,” says Bowden, “we are trying to get a base line of the wants and needs of the people of Marion.”

To do that during Wednesday night’s session Community Redesigned had the approximately 60 people who turned out go to different areas of the uptown district and really look at, turn in their input of what they wanted improved.

The ideas that came back from the walk mainly focused on improvements to the park.

“The park is a wasted area,” Brett Allen who lives on 5th Ave. said, “it only gets used once, maybe twice a month, wasting a lot of money, its such a nice space, we could utilize it a lot better.”

Other community members however noted that the park gets very congested when there is events and suggested expanding it, including Marion resident Dennis Naughten.

Bowden said that the park is one of the biggest assets that Marion has as a community, and is one of the things that they are looking at in possibly making changes.

Craig Adamson a Marion Business owner and Marion City Council member said he found the exercise eye opening. He says he wants to make Marion more user friendly.

Bowden says they want all the community involvement that they can get. Their website; www.planyouruptown.com is now up and running and has already gotten 150 ideas. Bowden encourages people to the website to submit their own ideas on the future of Uptown Marion.