March 29, 2024

Community members create their vision for downtown Newton

Main Street Iowa held a community meeting on Tuesday night at DMACC to create a five-year vision plan for downtown Newton.

The conversation was facilitated by Main Street Iowa. The community members and leadership were challenged with nine questions involving the highlights and challenges of downtown Newton.

“You can feel a wonderful sense of engagement and commitment to the revitalization of downtown as well of a sense of passion, a sense of community pride of what downtown means to the community of Newton,” Iowa Main Street State Coordinator Michael Wagler said.

The community meeting was supposed to have taken place during the initial meeting, but the city was holding the “Get to Know Newton” community rally, so the Iowa Main Street community meeting was delayed until Tuesday.

“I think one of the new unique aspects of what Newton has to take advantage of is with the Comprehensive Plan and what the city has done in the past five years,” Wagler said. “The branding effort that was really wrapped up in February, when we were here for our first visit, provides a wonderful opportunity to build a foundation on everything that is being done to use the visionary ideas that were included in tonight’s conversation.”

Iowa Main Street will take the result of the community response to the nine questions to draft a vision statement for downtown Newton.

“We will present that at Main Street University to the board and we will come back to present it to the community in April,” Wagler said.