CU Boulder students suggest downtown Longmont enhancements

About 30 University of Colorado Boulder environmental design students on Wednesday presented suggestions of possible ways to enhance downtown Longmont’s public areas to attract more people to the city’s central business district and get those people to spend more time there.

The students’ ideas ranged from making the downtown’s plazas, pedestrian breezeways and alleys more child- and family-friendly to specific landscaping and artistic touches. Their ideas were generated after earlier surveys of residents and downtown businesses.

Wednesday’s presentation was just the initial report from a project started last year that could continue for another four or more years, CU Boulder associate professor Brian Muller told the 20 Longmont residents, elected officials and business people who showed up at a Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce to see and comment on the students’ proposals.

Muller said the project represented a partnership among two classes, the city, the Longmont Downtown Development Authority and “the community of Longmont.”

Students reported that one of their surveys found a “strong consensus” that downtown Longmont’s alleys and breezeways “are bland and unattractive” and that there is a “need for lighting for safety” during evenings and early mornings.

The survey also suggested a need “to create spaces the community can interact and connect with.”

Another survey — of people’s attitudes about the St. Stephen’s Plaza on the east side of the 500 block of Main Street and the Sixth Avenue Plaza west of Main Street — found that many people felt there is “nothing to do or see” in those two plazas and their primary use is for people walking through to get to and from the alleys and parking lots behind Main Street buildings.

The students said that survey showed a need “for seating with views and landscaping to revitalize” those plaza spaces.

Josef Nelson, a junior-year CU Boulder environmental design student, presented a poster showing a possible redesign of the Sixth Avenue Plaza, one he said would recognize the presence of the existing Village Place retirement community housing immediately north of the plaza and an affordable housing project the city, Boulder County and the Downtown Development Authority are planning on Coffman Street just south of the plaza.

Nelson said his suggested “mostly passive” redesign aims to have a public plaza gathering place that would be usable by both residents living alongside it and by people who might stop to gather there, without attracting the kinds of crowds or events that would annoy the residents.

Other student posters showed how additional landscaping and other redesigned features could resolve dead and misused space and drainage issues in the plaza alongside the historic Old St. Stephen’s Church.

Colton Guarini, who is focusing his CU Boulder studies on urban planning, displayed a poster with suggestions for murals and other artistic additions to the walls of breezeways, something he said he thought would be “a great way to go.”

Lilly Bell, an environmental design senior, produced a poster with suggestions for enhancing downtown Longmont’s alleys, including one that would have a mountain vista on the alley wall and rocks for children to play on and another that would have a short child-size climbing wall.

Bell said she would like to see more child-friendly uses included in the downtown public areas, because “there’s so much space for children to play.”

Kimberlee McKee, Downtown Development Authority executive director, after Wednesday’s meeting said fleshing out the initial phase of the students’ project, along with future efforts and suggestions, “will probably build on the bones we’ve already created.”

Longmont City Councilmembers Polly Christensen, Bonnie Finley and Joan Peck were among those attending the presentation.

“This is exactly the kind of collaboration with universities and colleges that we need to do,” Christensen said. She said the students have been able to bring “fresh eyes and their new knowledge” to downtown revitalization approaches, and “it kind of helps us to get a different perspective.”

Finley said the project is “a great learning tool for the students” and “a learning tool for us”  as the city strives to make downtown Longmont “more welcoming.”