Thursday evening, the Iowa State University Landscape Architecture Urban Design studio class took over the gallery at La Poste to present a series of concepts and designs for Perry’s Parks and Recreation Department.

The public was invited to view the student projects, which Landscape Architecture Professor Ben Shirtcliff said tie into economic development opportunities in addition to city beautification. He emphasized that the plans presented utilize the City’s existing resources to pull together a stronger recreation system, and most could be implemented with minimal costs to Perry. Shirtcliff feels the class and City have equally benefited from the project, and said the partnership gave his students an experience he couldn’t give them on his own.

“The tangible benefit is the students are creating very realistic representations of what might happen to help stimulate a conversation, which probably if they could see it and could dream of it, it would happen. And that’s the exciting part. The intangible part of it is this is where we learn more about each other, and we learn more about how cities work and what people really want. And I can’t do that in the classroom, I can only do that here in Perry.”

Shirtcliff added, if any of the students’ designs strike a chord with the City or the public, it would be relatively easy and cost-effective to implement the plan. He also said the work his class does for the City could synergize nicely with the work of the Community and Regional Planning studio class on the parks and trails master plan.