Indiana Main Street
Mayors’ Workshop
2020

Post COVID-19

 
 
 

Program
Description

 

Inspired and supported by the Mayors’ Institute of City Design, Columbus Design Institute (CDI) is hosting an online workshop with mayors from the State of Indiana. This three-day workshop will focus on the challenges cities are experiencing on their Main Streets or in their Downtowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, while looking optimistically towards a safe, post-COVID-19 era next summer. Like much of the United States, Indiana has been hit hard by COVID-19, with many hospitality industry workers currently unemployed, and hotels operating at a greatly diminished capacity. Downtowns feel empty, and one can see how small businesses are burdened by these economic challenges. 


Seeking to gather Indiana communities that are generally comparable by size and economy, five cities and mayors have been identified as a group to participate in this workshop:

Columbus — Mayor James Lienhoop
Shelbyville — Mayor Tom DeBaun
Zionsville — Mayor Emily Styron
Warsaw — Mayor Joseph Thallemer
Elkhart — Mayor Rod Roberson


Over two weeks in early December, each mayor will have the opportunity to learn from a Resource Team of design experts about current trends across the country, and then present about their community and its particular challenges in a workshop format. Each mayor will also have the opportunity to bring with them a member of City staff and a community stakeholder that is invested in the rebound of their downtown. 

 
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“The five cities in this Mayors’ Workshop are all places within Indiana that are well-positioned to succeed in the future. Since 2010, 345 cities and towns in Indiana have lost population. That’s over half of Indiana’s municipalities. But all five of these cities have gained population. These cities also all have structural factors that augur well for their future. Columbus, Elkhart, and Warsaw all have key industrial clusters. Shelbyville and Zionsville are part of the thriving metropolitan Indianapolis area. All of these cities have high-quality downtown buildings.”

Aaron Renn

 

Resource
Team

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Leila Aman
City of Milwaukie
Milwaukie, OR

 

Leila Aman is the City of Milwaukie, Oregon’s Community Development Director. She oversees the City’s Community Development, Planning and Building Divisions and serves as the Executive Director of the Milwaukie Redevelopment Commission, the City’s Urban Renewal Agency. Leila is responsible for leading the City’s redevelopment efforts and implementing the City’s goals related to housing and economic development.  While Leila is a planner by training, her career has been focused on implementation of City and Regional planning efforts through public/private partnerships. Leila has over 16 years of experience working on redevelopment of publicly owned properties, primarily in distressed and emerging districts. Leila has spent the majority of her career in the public sector including six years at Metro, the Portland area regional government in their Transit Oriented Development Program and at Prosper Portland (formerly the Portland Development Commission) the City of Portland’s Urban Renewal Agency. Leila also spent several years working at Fregonese Associates where she led the firm’s efforts related to redevelopment and small area planning and implementation.  She serves as a strategic Advisor to Site Specific, a public art and planning firm. She earned her Masters in Regional Planning from Cornell University.

Leila is a native of Portland where she lives with her family.

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Julia Day
Gehl
New York, NY

 

Julia is Director, Team Lead at Gehl who has focused her experience on developing projects across design, policy and advocacy to demonstrate streets as public spaces and engage people in the planning process. For eight years, Julia has worked with city agencies and community leaders in New York and London to implement Public Space Public Life studies, to repurpose streets as play spaces in communities lacking open space, to develop neighborhood design plans that support better walking and biking, and to collect new data decision makers can use to lead policy and design change in their cities. As a Director, Julia facilitates projects where urban leaders from multiple sectors can collaborate to improve quality of life.

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James Lima
James Lima Planning + Development
New York, NY

 

James Lima has been actively engaged in complex matters of real estate, economic development, and public policy since 1986, with extensive private and public sector experience in the planning and revitalization of urban places at a variety of scales. James founded JLP+D in 2011 after leading redevelopment strategies for numerous large-scale sites as a partner at a major national economic and real estate advisory firm. Previously, he was Senior Director of Development in the New York office of residential REIT AvalonBay Communities, Inc. Additionally, James was appointed by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg as founding President of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, overseeing the redevelopment of a 172-acre former military facility in New York Harbor. James also served as Senior Vice President for Special Projects at the NYC Economic Development Corporation, where he managed initiatives focused on growth of the city’s central business districts, including Downtown Brooklyn, and increasing public access to the city’s waterfront. His prior work as Assistant Commissioner at the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development and at Forest City Ratner Companies centered on new construction of affordable housing and retail development throughout NYC. 

 
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Justin Garrett Moore
New York City Design Commission 
New York, NY

 

Justin Garrett Moore is a transdisciplinary designer and urbanist and serves as the executive director of the Public Design Commission. He has extensive experience in architecture, urban design, and planning—from large-scale urban policies and projects to grassroots and community-based planning, design, and arts initiatives. At the Public Design Commission, his work focuses on prioritizing quality and excellence for the public realm and fostering accessibility, diversity, and inclusion in New York's public buildings, landscapes, and art. He is a member of the American Planning Association's AICP Commission, the Urban Design Forum, and the Black urbanist collective BlackSpace. Justin is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the Yale School of Architecture. His social enterprise, Urban Patch, focuses on sustainable development through social and environmental design projects in the United States and Rwanda. He holds a Bachelor of Design from the University of Florida and a Master of Architecture and a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University.

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Ken Ray
Toole Design
Silver Springs, MD

 

Ken is the Mid-Atlantic Deputy Director of Landscape Architecture. He has a broad range of experience on multimodal transportation planning and design, from complex urban design projects to large statewide and national initiatives. Ken combines more than a decade of urban design and project management experience with a master’s degree in landscape architecture and professional experience in transportation planning, equipping him to drive project success from both design and policy perspectives. Ken is passionate about creating exceptional experiences in the public realm, from streetscapes to trails, plazas to parks. He has a keen understanding of the importance of design details and how they contribute to the experiential qualities of a place.

 

Columbus
Design
Institute

 

Project Team

Hadley Fruits, Photography

Richard McCoy, Project Direction

Chris Merritt, Landscape Architect and Urban Planner

Aaron Renn, Urban Analyst and Writer

Ben Valentine, Project Management

Courtney Xavier, Web Design

 

Guests