City of Ellensburg Capital-Unity Park Shade Tents

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4.3 Connecting the Community 4.3.1 Implement creative place-making Creative place-making works with community members to bring together arts and culture in ways that connect physical space to needs in the community. The goal of this effort would be to foster broader exploration of downtown by visitors while showcasing the talent of a local artist. Ellensburg should explore working with an organization like the nonprofit Pomegranate Center based in Seattle that explores creative place-making in communities as a paftnership effort. Creative place-making projects could be incorporated into the town center as well as create physical connections between CWU and downtown Ellensburg. Today, key stakeholders are working on an exciting program to connect through a public art program to create "markers" that will be located in a variety of locations to explore between downtown and campus. The concept, dubbed "Project Brilliance," will implement reflector art pieces from the late Dick Elliott, a renowned local artist to be placed in strategic locations throughout downtown Ellensburg to ultimately connect the Old Heat Plant, slated to become a visitor's center for Central Washington University, with the core of downtown. Figure 11 on the following page illustrates the potential locations for these installations on key corlers throughout the larger downtown area. 4.3.2 Continue partnership with Central Washington University to bring investment into the core of downtown over tinte whether through programs or capitul projects. Central Washington University is a strong partner with the Ellensburg community, and its students represent a significant portion of the customer base in downtown. Over time, the University and the Downtowners should seek partnership efforts that may bring programs or even capital projects into the downtown. Some of the ideas expressed in other recommendations of this report could be potential partnership projects. 4.3.3 Implement bicyclefriendly streets as idenffied in prior plans. Ellensburg has worked on bicycle friendly streets and the downtown is very navigable by bicycle. The community should continue to implement these important recommendations and will implement new bicycle racks that have been designed in similar style to existing quality downtown street fumifure. 4.3.4 Implement circulator transportationfrom CWU through downtown to hotels, Central Transit already operates a fixed route system in Ellensburg. Over time, the possibility of a circulator that connects the local hotels through downtown and onto Central Washington's campus would be an excellent way of creating a regular service for visitors to the community. The potential route is shown in Figure 11 below. 35