Downtown Keosauqua embodies small-town America: It’s the place where everybody knows your name and passes by with a smile and a wave. To date, though, the community hasn’t capitalized on the uniqueness of this experience. There is no physical sense of place or feeling that you’ve arrived at a destination. Unless you’re a local, downtown Keosauqua is Anywhere, USA.

Fortunately, the foundations of a truly great main street are in place in Keosauqua. Small shops welcome residents and visitors alike. Historic architecture dots 1st Street. Perhaps even more importantly, Keosauqua residents are driven to capitalize on this foundation and transform their community.  

The third tool that Keosauqua needs to pursue is the creation of design guidelines for downtown, perhaps as an overlay zoning district. The guidelines should focus on form rather than use, encouraging strong design and supporting both walkability and small businesses. The guidelines will position Keosauqua to be more proactive in that they will set the community on a particular path from the onset rather than reacting to individual proposals as they come in.

To boost this program, Keosauqua may consider creating a vacant building registry, which would require building owners to register their buildings. Keosauqua would need to define:

• Registration requirements (e.g., when is a building deemed ‘vacant’?);
• How the registration is structured and what fees, if any, are applicable, especially in terms of incentives;
• Property inspection protocols; and,
• How vacant building plans are developed.

An example from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning can be found in Appendix E.

The design guidelines adopted in Gloucester Village, Virginia, provide a model for Keosauqua. The guidelines are supplementary to other requirements specified in the zoning ordinance and building code and act as yet another means of creating the kind of community where people will want to live, work, learn, and play.

Implementation of these guidelines and the resulting sense of place will have a ripple effect throughout the entire community and the local economy. For instance, with a little charm and things to do, people will be more inclined to join their partners during hunting or fishing trips to the area, meaning more dollars will be spent locally and that more businesses – most of which are small and locally owned – will be supported. This money then will be recycled in the community, furthering the impact of these seemingly small steps.

The guidelines should be based on a “fix it first” mentality: Focus on maintaining what’s already in place, then on repairing, removing, and rebuilding. The last step in this process should be cosmetic enhancements to structures. As these guidelines are developed in Keosauqua, it will be essential to consider site elements (e.g., setbacks, parking areas, lighting, fences, utility screening, etc.), elements of the buildings themselves (e.g., doors, windows, roofs, ornamental elements, etc.), materials, and signage, which is a key concern for Keosauqua residents. The Gloucester Village design guidelines can be found in Appendix F.

A recurring theme throughout Iowa is the presence of dilapidated building stock. This is often a result of lack of pride, owners living in other states, and lack of funds; the funds required to maintain and enhance historic buildings can be daunting. Still, the presence of dilapidated buildings, especially on Main Street, tells visitors there is a lack of pride in the community and greatly diminish – or completely erase – the possibility of someone passing through the community returning. By allowing dilapidated properties to exist in perpetuity, the City, in some ways, condones this behavior, ultimately diminishing the values of both the property in question and adjacent properties.

To overcome this, Keosauqua must develop property maintenance standards, shifting maintenance from an option to a legal requirement, protecting and growing property values throughout the community while also protecting the health, safety, and welfare of residents.

Keosauqua should look to the City of Reno’s Downtown Property Maintenance Standards as a starting point. The Reno standards highlight several areas that will be key for Keosauqua:

• Signs
• Sidewalks and alleys
• Lighting
• Vacant buildings
• Landscaping maintenance

The full City of Reno Downtown Property Maintenance Standards and the City of Corsicana (TX) Downtown Property Maintenance Code can be found in Appendix D.

Another major challenge for Keosauqua is the fact that some vacant buildings are not insured. While the buildings do not have the same risk exposure as occupied buildings, vacant buildings still may face structural damage from a fire, natural disaster, or vandalism. Additionally, someone may wander into or around a vacant property, get injured, and sue the building owner, leaving the owner financially exposed.

Keosauqua should adopt an ordinance that requires owners to maintain a minimum level of liability insurance on vacant properties. The added cost of this insurance may be enough to spur the owner to repair, rehabilitate, or otherwise remedy the situations on their property.

Keosauqua’s 1st Street is bookended on its southwest end by the new City Hall location, which is situated at the intersection of 1st Street and Highway 1. Moving northeasterly, the Keosauqua Public Library and the historic Twombly Building serve as anchors until reaching the other end of 1st Street, where the old creamery is located.

While simple beatification strategies – more street trees, benches, planters, etc. – would transform the experience along 1st Street, perhaps most impactful for downtown Keosauqua will be the creation of a number of updates and enhancements to the municipal code. Key tools will be the creation of property maintenance standards across the city, insurance requirements for all structures, and downtown design guidelines.