Hesitant to venture downtown because you’re not sure you know how to get to the Iowa Events Center or the Science Center of Iowa? Visiting from Boone for the state wrestling meet and don’t have a clue where to park the minvan?

Take heart, wary visitors and weary travelers. The Downtown Community Alliance is designing signs for downtown’s key attractions that could make you a Saturday-morning hero, or at least save you from looking like a complete idiot.

Beginning with a series of community workshops that began last month, DCA officials have been seeking public input for designs for signs they hope can be installed this summer throughout downtown, as well as along Interstate 235 and the major arterial roads feeding into the central business district.

The city of Des Moines, Polk County and the Downtown Community Alliance equally divided the $60,000 cost for a comprehensive mapping study and $18,000 for RDG Planning & Design to develop a system of signs. Other than some highway signs on I-235, downtown currently has no signs to direct tourists to attractions.

“This is meeting a need that our community has had for a long time,” said Matt McCoy, the DCA’s vice president of community development. “I’ve had people say, ‘Gosh, this is a great idea; why didn’t we think of this before?’”

The attractions are categorized by east- and west-side destinations, with districts such as Court Avenue and the East Village highlighted, as well as parks and outdoor spaces such as Nollen Plaza and the Principal Riverwalk. Several primary destinations on both sides of the river, among them the Capitol, Hoyt Sherman Place and the Civic Center, as well as secondary destinations such as the Polk County Courthouse and City Hall, are among the 33 targeted attractions. All public parking structures are also included in the sign program.

Working from design styles from 91 communities around the country, focus groups that included city, county and other stakeholder representatives spent three days in December narrowing the list to a handful of choices. Those choices were further refined by an e-mailed survey sent to Greater Des Moines businesses earlier this month.

A public meeting for further input will be held sometime in late February, at which time participating organizations will learn what percentage of the cost they will pay. A non-profit foundation will be set up to handle the contributions from each participating organization, McCoy said.

“Each facility, in order to play, must pay their percentage of costs,” he said. “For instance, if the Riverwalk appears on the signage a certain percentage of time, they’ll pay that portion of the cost.”

Because the majority of the attractions are municipally owned, the city of Des Moines and Polk County will wind up paying the majority of the production and installation costs, he said.

A request for proposal for the production and installation of the signs is expected to be released in March. Until that time, the cost to produce and install the signs remains the big unknown, McCoy said.

DCA officials requested that the signs be designed with a slide-out feature to minimize the cost of adding or deleting attractions, he said. Though additional sign inserts may be completed in the city sign shop, the entire project would have been too large for the city facility to do, he said.

New downtown maps that are keyed to these destinations will also be produced to guide both pedestrians and drivers, as well as providing a guide to access points to the skywalk system.

“I’ve learned more about signs than you can imagine,” McCoy said, “but it’s been fun. I think (having the signs) is going to be a neat experience; especially if you’re coming into Des Moines for the wrestling tournament. It will let them get their family around town with a lot more confidence.”