Since February, a committee comprised of city officials, parks and recreation board members, chamber members and business people have been envisioning the city’s future.

The visioning committee, which was put together when Dyersville became one of 12 small Iowa communities selected to participate in the Iowa Living Roadways Community Visioning program, was tasked with compiling a list of priorities to serve as guidelines for future roadway and community development projects within the city. In conjunction with the Iowa Department of Transportation, Iowa State Extension and Trees Forever, the program funded a comprehensive study of the city’s roads, history and green spaces and other assets for the committee to consider while designating priorities. After several months of focus sessions and group meetings, committee members believe they have arrived at those priorities and are ready to share them with the community for public input.

At the top of the list for enhancement is Dyersville’s green spaces.

“A lot of the (visioning) process we’ve been going through has been about enhancing our roadways and the way people see our community when they drive through town,” said Adam Huehnergarth, who has been on Dyersville’s parks and recreation board for seven years and was a member of the visioning committee. “That’s why we started morphing our ideas into our green spaces, because that’s what we have.”

At the top of the list of green spaces slated for enhancement is Westside Park.

Crews are in the process of building a walk/hike/bike trail along the park’s borders on Third Street SW and Third Avenue SW. Eventually, Heuhnergarth said, those trails will be linked with another planned along Bear Creek and will create 1.8 miles of pedestrian access that will be nearly uninterrupted by traffic.

The new trails are just one piece of the Westside Park puzzle that the committee would like to see take shape.

“There are a lot of ideas on what Westside Park could become,” said Pete Bonifas, Parks and Recreation Director. “There’s already a lot of excitement just with the trail that’s going in. We’d like to see that continue to be expanded and connected, and we’d also like to see something really neat and exciting for the FEMA block.”

Located just north of Westside Park, the “FEMA block” is bounded by Second and Third Avenues SW and First and Second Streets SW, where the city and FEMA bought out residences that became uninhabitable after repeated flooding in the past decade. The committee has big ideas for the block.

With possible plans including an open-air structure that would be capable of housing both farmers markets and outdoor concerts, Bonifas said that the FEMA block has the potential to be a focal point for the community.

“We’ve got a whole city block to do something with right next to downtown that we want to make it beautiful with landscaping and trees, and make it usable for community gatherings,” he said. Other features the committee would like to see at the square include community garden plots and a public orchard.

Heuhnergarth agreed that the FEMA block — what the visioning committee has dubbed Dyersville’s future “City Square,” — has potential to be a huge asset for the community, but that it’ll take time, and money, to get there.

“Our first priority will probably be the things that are easiest and cheapest to get done,” he said. That includes the Westside Park trail system — complete with the construction of a pedestrian bridge over the North Fork from Candy Cane Park — and the installation of a 12-hole disc golf course at Westside Park.

The committee envisions the disc golf course largely to the west of Third Street SW in the open green space east of Bear Creek. Plans call for native prairie grasses to be planted between the “holes,” which City Administrator Mick Michel said would greatly reduce the amount of grass that needs regular mowing, which would in turn save the city money.

The trail system and disc golf course are looking like sure bets, Bonifas said, and will likely be completed by next fall. With advising from Trees Forever, the city will also plant hundreds of new trees in the park. Many other ideas, however, including the FEMA block’s redevelopment, are still in their infancy and could easily change depending on public input and funding sources.

“A lot of these ideas are just concepts,” Bonifas said. “From here what we’ll have to do is take (the ideas) to… the city council, which will have a goal setting meeting in December where we’ll take a look and see what ranks as far as priorities with the city and where they’d like to start, and how they’d like to do it.”

Bonifas and Michel said that completion of projects like the City Square is probably 5-10 years out, with timeframes tied to funding the city secures.

“A lot of the funding is going to be based on private donations, as well as on public resources that will primarily come in the form of city funding,” Michel said. The Living Roadways program will also assist the committee in securing other funding sources like grants and private partnerships.

Even still, Michel said that some enhancements might be closer to 10-15 years down the road simply as a result of their long-term timeframes. Gateway enhancement projects at the newly planned US 20 interchange on Dyersville’s west side as well as at the intersection of Second Avenue and Highway 136 are among the planned gateway improvements.

In the meantime, the visioning committee will continue to receive public input like it did last week at an open house hosted at the Dyersville Social Center. About 75 area residents viewed artist renderings and talked to committee members about their ideas.

“The feedback has all been very positive so far,” said Heuhnergarth.

Bonifas added: “It’s exciting. A lot of these are still just ideas, but they can go anywhere from here.”