Focus groups for Upland improvement held at Avis Industrial

Leland Boren, Harry Eggink and Michel Mounayar, Ball State University; Gene Habecker, Taylor University; Roy Budd, Energize-ECI; LaRita Boren, Jo Ann Gora, Ball State University; Chip Jaggers, Ball S

Focus groups held with town merchants, students, homeowners and more

By Courtney Flynn
cflynn@chronicle-tribune.com

Published: Saturday, April 10, 2010 1:08 AM EDT

UPLAND--Upland will soon be receiving a facelift.

"There is a lot of excitement in the air," Upland Town Council member Chip Jaggers said

Community members from Upland, along with students and staff from the department of architecture and planning at Ball State University, came together Thursday and Friday at Avis Industrial Corporation, 1909 S. Main St., to discuss ideas on how to make the community more aesthetically appealing, more presentable to future homebuyers and businesses; and how to connect the downtown area, Taylor University and neighborhoods as one.

Focus groups were held Thursday night and Friday morning with Upland merchants, students, teachers, social clubs, churches, homeowners and others.

"There were people from all walks of life," Jaggers said.

With such a variety of people, there was also a variety of improvement recommendations.

First-year urban design graduate student Sherri Agnew was working on plans based around reviving the downtown area.

"We want to bring back local businessesand make it more walkable," she said.

To do this, she said she will suggest more plants and trees be planted along with giving some of the downtown buildings more of a "homey" feel.

A sense of entry into the town is also needed, college of architecture and planning associate dean Michel Mounayar said.

"A cathedral canopy made from large trees will give that sense of entry," he said.

Another idea that came from community and Ball State involvement was to have Taylor and the downtown area connect with a pass system made for pedestrians and bikers, graduate student Nick Serrano said.

Mounayar said he would like this to happen by improving Second Avenue with the pathway, but of course still allowing automobile traffic.

The current vision of the pathway is to have it make a complete circle from Taylor to the downtown area, through the parks and neighborhoods and then back to Taylor, Mounayar said. Other smaller improvements to bring the community together and make it more appealing included adding an
automated DVD vending machine, planting more flowers and adding a research area where students, community members entrepreneurial businesses can locate, Ball State professor Harry Eggink said.

While the Ball State team was hard at work brainstorming and drafting ways to improve the community, they were always ready and willing to talk with community members.

"It's nice getting embedded in the community; some of them become friends for life," Eggink said. "You
couldn't get these kind of ideas and this kind of input in a regular office."

Jaggers also said he liked how the ideas on how to improve the community were coming together.

"There's a lot of intermingling and mixing going on just within the community and between the community and university because of the structure of the focus group," he said.

Agnew, who is still fairly new to these community projects, agreed.

"We try to be really involved in the community, so it's fun to see how involved they get with us, too," she said.

Being involved with different communities and trying to help them improve has been apart of the Ball State architecture program for more than 40 years. This year, Upland was chosen as one of those communities to be
helped.

This program did not a cost a penny from Upland taxpayers' pockets, but rather various private donors chipped in to cover the $10,000 cost to Ball State, Jaggers said.

The drafts and ideas generated from this charrette are expected to be presented to community members sometime in late April or May, Jaggers said.

"The timing of this is perfect," he said. "There have been so many people over the past 10 to 15 years that have been trying to make Upland better and this is just a way for us to go into the future together. It's kind of like the perfect storm."