Students in MSU's Landscape Architecture program might soon get the chance to redesign the downtown area of a northern Michigan city.
Traverse City, a community of about 15,000 people, is in the process of requesting help from the students as part of the Small Town Design Initiative, a program run by Warren Rauhe, an associate professor of landscape architecture and director of the initiative.
In the project, the students would work with Traverse City residents to redesign a 2-mile stretch of land that runs alongside the Grand Traverse Bay, as well as attempt to better connect it with the downtown area, Rauhe said.
"There's a lot of open space, a lot of green space there, a lot of opportunity to do something really special," he said. "It's really a tremendous project, and it's really just a great setting."
The program has allowed students to work with various communities for decades, Rauhe said.
The initiative was formed in collaboration with MSU Extension, the Office of University Outreach & Engagement and the College of Social Science about five years ago.
The city still is in the application process and has an April 15 deadline. Initiative members will make the final decision on whether to pursue the project by the middle of May, Rauhe said.
That should follow with meetings in the summer, developing the members' visions into designs during the fall and a decision by Traverse City residents by early winter, Rauhe said.
Students in the project would conduct meetings with residents, take the ideas that spawned from the discussion and turn them into visual design images, he said.
"We could sit in a room with 50 people and talk about the same project, and there could be different visions in their heads," Rauhe said. "That first meeting is a very key thing. Anything they want to talk about is fair game."
Many Traverse City residents are ready to express their views, said City Planner Russ Soyring. He added that he envisions that residents will want a continuum of ideas for the space, which could include a vibrant urban landscape with restaurants and shops.
Part of the students' designs would include how to connect the waterfront with the downtown community, which is separated by a highway. Doing so would further connect the two, he said.
"It's not always easy to cross," Soyring said. "It would be nice to be able to get to the waterfront in a way that you don't feel like you're going to be threatened by walking across the highway."
Heather Crawford, a landscape architecture senior, has been working with the design initiative since last spring.
The group conducts three meetings with community residents, asking questions such as, "If you were to take a balloon ride over your town in 10-15 years, what would you want to see?" during the first, she said. During the second meeting, the students return with images of other towns they think represent what the residents want to see.
The residents have a chance to react to the images, and then the students will take photos of their town and create before-and-after designs that are presented at the third meeting, Crawford said.
"One of the major things we try to do in the project is not impose our personal preconceived notions on what should happen," Crawford said. "We really try to take their feedback and make every project their own."
