Durability, low-maintenance materials and functionality for Federal Avenue Plaza were key for the Mason City, Iowa downtown redevelopment: precast concrete permeable pavers (Borgert Products) in four color tones ("San Diego', a custom "Autumn Blend', "Charcoal' and "Pewter') on a bituminous setting bed; integral-colored concrete (L.M. Scofield Co.); and synthetic turf that infiltrates stormwater and can support the weight of fire trucks if the need arises. Pathways and patterns are reinforced by plantings of "Princeton Sentry' ginkgo trees, "Happy Returns' daylilies and "Karl Foerster' feather reed grass. The plaza space was once a functioning part of Federal Avenue, but was vacated by the city in the 1970s to allow for the construction of the regional shopping mall. This view of the plaza looks south and terminates at the shopping mall.

The story of Mason City's downtown is a microcosm of America's history within the last century and a half. It is and has been America's downtown – a vibrant small city (pop. 28,079) in the middle of the country full of music, life and vision.

Since the mid-1850s, downtown Mason City, Iowa, has thrived on thoughtful planning, along with a healthy dose of creativity and change. The downtown's early years were defined by a lively mix of shops, banks, hotels, a Central Park, trolleys, apartments and cultural attractions, such as Frank Lloyd Wright's Park Inn Hotel (renovated in 2011) and adjacent City National Bank. Completed in 1910, the hotel, designed in the Prairie School style, is the last remaining Frank Lloyd Wright designed hotel in the world.

Black granite cubes are placed to express pattern and offer additional seating. The design team settled on a simple palette of colors and materials that worked with the many brick and terra cotta architectural features found along the streetscape. The earth tones used allow the reconstructed spaces to connect the overall experience.

Beside Mason City's Wright and Burley Griffin designed architecture, the city is most identified as the hometown of Meredith Willson (1902–1984), the inspiration for his 1957 Broadway musical The Music Man. The film adaptation followed in 1962, with Robert Preston memorably portraying the role of Harold Hill.

The city's darker past includes the robbery of the First National Bank of Mason City on March 13, 1934 by John Dillinger and five of his gang members (including Lester Gillis, aka Baby Face Nelson). The gang made off with $52,000 (the equivalent of $925,000 today). Dillinger was the first "public enemy number one" of the U.S. Bureau of Investigation (renamed the "FBI" in 1935).

Architectural ornamentation and forms found at the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Park Inn Hotel on West State Street (right) were the inspiration for the four cut metal paneled light stanchions, although the design team gave careful consideration not to mimic the hotel or revert to historic replication. The towers are 25' 4" tall, each lit by 4 18" LED (3000k) strips (11.1 watts/ft.) with 30???(R)???AE? beams. The catenary lights (fixtures by Louis Poulsen Lighting) are kept suspended at least 16' above the street intersections along the corridor and at the plaza performance space.

As downtowns across America struggled to compete in the automobile era of the 1970s and '80s, Mason City embraced change by locating a regional shopping mall as an anchor of the downtown community. Despite these efforts, as was true in small cities across the country, downtown Mason City struggled to stay the living heart for the city and region. The downtown was still a rich and dynamic part of the city, but had lost some of its previous energy.

At the turn of the 21st century and facing aging infrastructure, community leaders invested heavily in visionary downtown plans to rekindle the underlying energy. The new century brought with it a commitment to follow through with built projects. RDG Planning & Design, WHKS & Co., and WWA were competitively selected in 2009 to redesign four blocks of Mason City's "Main Street" (Federal Avenue), and one block of adjacent plaza space immediately north of the shopping mall to support economic development and to reestablish the downtown as the heart of the community.

What are these people doing? They are standing in front of the City Center Building, built in 1911 as the First National Bank of Mascon City. They are nattily attired in clothing evocative the 1930s and sporting shotguns and "Tommy" (Thompson submachine) guns to reenact the March 13, 1934 bank robbery here by John Dillinger and five of his gang members. The gang made off with $52,000 ($925,000 today).

Design and Concepts
The transformation of the streetscape and plaza began through intense public participation led by a diverse team that included landscape architects, engineers, architects, lighting designers, artists and graphic designers. Each member of the team committed to walking the site and adjacent areas day and night, examining how spaces were used, and studying the downtown's cultural, economic, and physical history. In addition to meetings with the general public and adjacent business and property owners, the team met with the Main Street organization, Wright on the Park committee and city staff to understand what the community and neighborhood might be in the future.

The constructed streetscape and plaza succeed in addressing the many and challenging goals of the community through a consistent application and considered installation of low-maintenance, durable materials; the purposeful inclusion of artful elements that interpret the area's history; and the creation of useful public spaces in a Prairie School-inspired style. The community and design team together created a distinct and revitalized core specifically for the people of Mason City. It holds meaning for all involved.

The central performance space is located within the circle at the center of the plaza. Catenary lighting similar to the streetscape intersections illuminates this space. Event power is also available for entertainers or festivities.

An important factor in achieving a meaningful design for the community was the work of RDG Dahlquist Art Studio – an integrated part of RDG Planning & Design. The art studio worked hand-in-hand with the landscape architects and lighting designers"?ufrom the analysis and design conception phases to the fabrication of the artistic elements"?uincluding cut-metal lighting stanchions, benches, screen fencing and custom designed tiles.

At the largest scale, the streetscape design creates a rhythm of vibrant elements and spaces throughout the corridor. The continuity and liveliness throughout the streetscape is provided via timeless materials, colors, textures, plant material and repetition of style. The rhythm of the streetscape is punctuated periodically at the intersections and ultimately at the Federal Avenue Plaza, setting the stage for the everyday pedestrian street life and larger community events that now occur with ever-greater frequency.

The building at right was the City National Bank Building until 1922. Today, it is the entrance to the dining room of the refurbished Park Inn Hotel. Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned in 1909 to design the hotel and the bank building. His open floor plan, low-overhanging eaves and horizontal plane architecture is referred to as "Prairie School" design. Park Inn Hotel closed in 1972. The hotel and the bank buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places the same year. In 1999 the Iowa Historic Preservation Alliance listed the hotel on the 10 Most Endangered Historic Properties. The buildings underwent a $20 million renovation, which was completed in 2011. The Frank Lloyd Wright "boutique" hotel today offers an engaging blend of history, impressive architecture and modern amenities. It is the last remaining Frank Lloyd Wright designed hotel.

Concurrent to the streetscape design and construction, renovation was underway at the Frank Lloyd Wright historic Park Inn Hotel, immediately adjacent to the streetscape project. Wright's work, and other Prairie School style designs, inspired the overall configuration and geometry of many streetscape features and the plaza, but the design team gave careful consideration not to mimic the hotel or revert to historic replication. Instead of recreation, the design uses materials in a "contemporary twist" to engage the public in a new tone and urban character. Today, the successful coordination of the hotel renovation and streetscape results in tourists coming to Mason City for a hotel tour or stay, but then discovering the richness of the downtown environment at the doorsteps of the hotel.

The granite benches and color concrete bands further express the stylistic patterning of the ground plane inspired by Prairie Style architecture.

Streetscape Components
The design team implemented the design concept with a triple bottom line approach with a particular focus on place-specific design and maintainable materials. The following are some specific components of the streetscape that have allowed this place to be socially, economically and environmentally successful.

The streetscape design employs precast concrete pavers, interpretive human-scale masonry piers and cut metal benches to express the Mason City character. The design team settled on a simple palette of colors and materials that worked with the many brick and terra cotta architectural features found along the streetscape. "Skyline' honeylocust trees, Red Fountainbush switch grass and white and "Pica Bella" coneflowers further define the pedestrian zone.

Lighting
Lighting in the plaza and along the streetscape was designed to set the stage for community events, strolling from shop to restaurant and reflecting the history of the community: Catenary lighting (use of structural cables) reminiscent of historic Mason City lighting is used within the plaza and at all Federal Avenue intersections. Custom energy efficient lighting stanchions in the plaza create dynamic beacons in the plaza at night and sculptural markings of a key path to and from the streetscape and the mall during the day.

Artists at RDG Dahlquist Art Studio, an integrated unit of RDG Planning & Design, designed and fabricated custom features throughout the streetscape such as the white terra cotta panels that are inset into vertical masonry markers at all intersections and in a few key areas around the site. Patterns are based on area history and ornamentation in the corridor. The custom black cut metal caps cast interesting shadows.

Synthetic Turf
Synthetic turf in the plaza provides a fire access route to the shopping mall, a low maintenance, passive recreation space for families patronizing the streetscape area, and is designed to accommodate significant storm water infiltration needs (rock chamber below).

Illumination of the vertical decorative tile band insets on the brick piers (35 locations) is via surface-mounted LED light strips (iO Lighting) with a narrow 10???(R)???AE? distribution and 3000k white light source. There are two fixtures per pier, rated at 7.62 watts/ft. Downlighting for the pier caps (19 locations) is also LED strips (4 @ 12" length per cap), but with wide beam optics (65???(R)???AE?).

Interpretive Markers
The dominant visual element along the street is the Prairie School style and architecturally inspired interpretive markers. These markers feature custom inset terra cotta tiles that abstract four patterns derived from Mason City's culture and heritage, referencing local architectural details, Music Man history and indigenous prairie plants. The use of terra cotta adds another layer of meaning to the design, as Mason City embodies the terra cotta ornamentation of the greater Midwest that occurred when "fireproof" architecture emerged after many fires destroyed parts of cities, such as the "Great Chicago Fire."

Prairie School-Inspired Features
Additional streetscape features were further inspired by the Prairie School heritage as rehearsed within custom screen fencing, long linear pavers (sourced regionally) and custom benches. Granite benches and integrated color concrete bands further express the stylistic patterning via vertical and horizontal expression.

Yet another custom element by RDG Dahlquist Art Studio for the Mason City streetscape is the cut-metal screen fencing behind the Park Inn.

Planting
Plant materials were chosen to bring comfort and seasonal beauty to the streetscape, but also for their ability to withstand harsh winters, snow and salt loading and their xeric properties to minimize required annual maintenance. Place and Pride Local business owners and stakeholders are the stewards of the current Mason City downtown. A new energy exists and has been the consequence of strong multidisciplinary city and consultant teams engaged with volunteers, stakeholders and the community to create meaningful public places... and lasting community pride. Downtown Mason City was named a 2013 Great Neighborhood (1 of 10 nationally) by the APA American Great Places program citing this streetscape and plaza redevelopment as a contributing factor to the success of the downtown resurgence. "The impact has been swift and strong, giving us an inviting front porch for our many visitors from out of the area visiting historic Park Inn Hotel," said Jean Marinos, councilwoman and former Mason City mayor. ""?(R)? This project has also given us a new and inspiring place for our own community to hold events and come together."

"Downtown Mason City was in pretty tough shape," recalls Pamela Myhre, former Mason City growth development and planning director. "The city had already begun to tackle revitalization efforts in the downtown with a downtown planning study, continued participation in the downtown Main Street program and a complete reconstruction of the historic Central Park Town Square, but it was the larger vision of a renewed downtown streetscape stretched from the plaza to 4th Street that might once again tie Federal Avenue together and create a greater whole that I was so pleased to be a part of. From generating community and business support, to city council negotiations, design deliberation and decisions, we finally see the end result and a 21st century downtown that reflects both its history and its hopes."

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Design Team
Landscape Architecture, Lighting Design, Electrical Engineering: RDG Planning & Design Integrated Art Design: RDG Dahlquist Art Studio
Lead Contractor: McKinness Excavating, Inc.
Architectural Consultants: Waggoner & Wineinger Architects Civil Engineering: WHKS & Co.

Vendors
Bridges: Site Amenities
RDG Dahlquist Art Studio (unit of RDG Planning & Design): design of custom benches, tiles, lighting stanchions, screen fencing. Fabricated by Iowa Metal Fabrication, Jim Russell Design, Rusty Berger Masonry, Blazek Electric, Inc., Charles Saul Engineering.
Bicycle Racks: Secure Site Design
Brick Masonry: Sioux City Brick
Cast Stone Masonry: Edwards Cast Stone Company
Colored Concrete: L.M. Scofield Co.
Granite Benches: Cold Spring Granite
Lighting
- Architectural Area Lighting (pedestrian fixtures)
- Louis Poulsen Lighting, Inc. (catenary fixtures)
- Valmont (poles)
Precast Concrete Pavers: Borgert Products, Inc.
Synthetic Turf: FieldTurf
Trash Receptacles: Victor Stanley, Inc.