PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM Members of a construction crew work on the Main Street streetscape project Tuesday afternoon. It is the first phase of the project and is located on Center Street, stretching from State to Church streets.

Over two months into the Main Street streetscape project, the Marshalltown Central Business District has launched the Head Downtown initiative.

Launched on June 16, Executive Director Danielle Lekin said the initiative is an effort to encourage people to patronize downtown businesses and make the businesses feel supported.

“We believe downtown is the living room of your community,” she said. “A thriving downtown is symbolic of a thriving community.”

Created by the Economic Vitality Team, Head Downtown will run through July 26.

“One of our strategic focuses is supporting the businesses during the streetscape project,” Lekin said. “We really want to make sure our businesses are adequately supported so we don’t lose any businesses.”

While the streetscape project is great for the downtown and the community, it can be challenging for the businesses.

“We just want to make sure we are focused on that,” she said.

Getting people to go downtown is a focus of the initiative, and the MCBD is initializing a few efforts to make it successful. For example, Lekin said MCBD will reach out to different corporate partners each week to encourage staff to utilize the downtown restaurants.

They also had initiative stickers made and she said the concept is similar to the “I Voted” stickers. The stickers will also help MCBD know how many people participated.

“You have this sticker and maybe people will go, ‘Oh, you were downtown. Maybe I should go downtown,'” Lekin said. “That was the focal point of the stickers — to encourage and have some advertising in the community like ‘Hey, I went downtown and dodged traffic cones. It’s not so bad.'”

She said the streetscape experience has not been bad, and there are still 1,500 traffic spots for the public to park. Lekin said it is not difficult to navigate the area. Fortunately, she has not heard of any business being seriously impacted by the work thus far. The Marshalltown Main Event team hosts a streetscape hour every Wednesday, and businesses are welcome to talk about impacts from the project. Lekin said not a lot of businesses have attended, and believes that is because there has been a lot of communication.

“A lot of the businesses facing that construction are not foot traffic businesses, but some are,” she said. “It’s a lot of service related industry.”

They also sent out a survey on Monday to inquire about business perception. Lekin wants to know if business has improved or decreased or been steady compared to one year ago.

“That information will guide our strategies on how to support downtown,” she said.

As the Head Downtown initiative runs and after it ends, Lekin hopes the downtown restaurants feel supported, as that is the goal.

“We want them to feel like MCBD cares about them and cares about their businesses,” she said. “We want them to feel like we are supporting them through this time, because there is a perception that construction can be difficult on small businesses. We want to encourage our community to support our small businesses and treat downtown Marshalltown like the destination we want it to be — [a place] to eat, shop, play and stay.”

Marshalltown Public Works Director Heather Thomas said the streetscape project is going well and the crew has been maintaining access to businesses. The only delay occurred last week due to the rain.

“All of the [old] water main is out and a new one (is) in,” she said. “There are connections to the buildings . . . They’re working on the storm sewer now, and they are close to 70 percent done with that. The rain slowed it down a little bit.”

Thomas expects Marshalltown residents will see pavement being placed in July and Phase 1 of the project is slated to be completed by Aug. 27 or Aug. 28. Then work will immediately begin on Phase 2, which will stretch from Center Street to Third Avenue and is expected to be completed by the end of 2025.

“We are on target,” Thomas said. “The biggest thing is I want to remind the public to come downtown. We have provided access, and all of the business doors are open.”

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Contact Lana Bradstream

at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.