In the beginning there was Court Avenue. Then the first East Village shops opened near the Capitol steps. Next came the landmark Wells Fargo Arena on a North hill followed by the bronze library in Gateway West.

With such rapid growth extending throughout downtown Des Moines in the last few years, the city and county have set out to connect the dots. Architect Erin Olson-Douglas will help them complete that picture.

On May 8, the city of Des Moines approved a $94,000 contract to hire her as a full-time consultant. Her role will be to study downtown Des Moines and from her findings, develop a strategy to guide optimal growth and create a cohesive area. The city and county will each pay $75,000 for the one-year project scheduled to begin in June. The additional money beyond Olson-Douglas’s contract will be used to hire outside consultants as needed during the study.

“Downtown has had unequaled amount of development in the last five years,” said Andrea Hauer, economic development coordinator for the city of Des Moines, “This is kind of an inventory to make sure we’re doing the right things and stay on track for the next five to 10 years.”

The project seeks to achieve several interrelated goals, including finding better ways to let visitors know what there is to do downtown, determining how past development plans can be updated to take advantage of new opportunities, and discovering ways to promote spin off development from Wells Fargo Arena.

“We are going to look at all the great places now in Des Moines and how they work with each other,” said Olson-Douglas. “We’re also looking at what opportunities are present in the city now that maybe weren’t here prior and what does that activity mean to the area around it.”

“A study for the Events Center around 2000 more or less told us where to put it, how to lay it out and the economic impact,” said Angela Connolly, chairperson of the Polk County Board of Supervisors. “Nothing actually told us how everything lined up and where things should be” as a whole.

When the city decided to hire someone to do this study, it did not look for an outside consultant from a big city or even a city staff member. Instead, it wanted an “embedded consultant,” said Hauer, someone who was familiar with Des Moines and could focus solely on this project.

Olson-Douglas will end her work with Substance Architecture and move to an office in the Amory, where she can use city and county staff and resources.

Her work will entail reviewing past studies of downtown Des Moines, specifically those done around the 1990s, to see if the plans they recommended have been implemented successfully. She’ll meet extensively with stakeholders, including residents, government groups and businesses, to get their input and she’ll determine if zoning codes still work with what the city and county previously envisioned.

All the information will be compiled into report, which will give the city and county direction for downtown development over the next five to 10 years. The parties involved expect her plans to be flexible but offer a solid enough framework to base future decisions upon.

“This is something the city has known it needed to do,” said Olson-Douglas. “In order for any other place to work well, Des Moines needs to have a healthy downtown. You look at cities across the country that are doing the best economically and have risen to places where people want to be, and it’s because they have an active and lively downtown.

“I think all great places remain somewhat isolated events in the city right now. If there are ways to get someone at the [Des Moines] Arts Festival in Gateway Park to think about going to Court Avenue to eat, then they will have reasons to keep coming back. The city can use some knitting.”

Olson-Douglas brings a strong educational background and work experience to the project. She received an architecture degree from Iowa State University and studied architecture and urban design for her graduate work at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. She’s participated in several projects in the Des Moines area with Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture, such as the Gray’s Lake bridge and new Sticks Inc. studio, as well as urban planning projects for Chan Krieger & Associates of Cambridge, including a redevelopment plan south of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and a similar project in Greensburg, N.C.

“Erin has superb credentials,” said Hauer. “Having worked in other cities and loving Des Moines enough to come back from the East Coast are very strong components on her part.”

“I am excited about the work,” Olson-Douglas said. “I am excited to be engaged in a future place that I feel a deep commitment to.”

Olson-Douglas comes to the project with her own notions about downtown Des Moines. She finds it similar to other cities in terms of the challenges it faces in competing with suburbs, attracting retail and providing enough parking. But she also finds Des Moines businesses’ financial participation in downtown unlike any other city.

“I think we have a phenomenal private sector in the community,” she said. “They make so many things possible from Principal Riverwalk to Meredith Trail. Their commitment to downtown far exceeds the expectation in terms of participation as a corporation.”

Her challenge: to take these successful elements and make them work together. With one year to do it, she expects the excitement and momentum everyone feels now will continue and bring about real change after the plan is finished.

Officials are just as optimistic and realize the long-term value in doing a study like this.

“I think it [the study] will give our citizens a better quality of life,” Connolly said. “It will protect our investments that we have downtown and make it all work together.”