Beaverdale could be the first community to join the Urban Neighborhood Main Street District initiative under Main Street Iowa, a program within the Iowa Department of Economic Development, if the Des Moines City Council approves the proposal at its May 5 meeting.

The new program is being started to provide assistance to urban communities that don’t fit the requirements of the Main Street Iowa program. To help kick off the Urban Neighborhood initiative, Main Street Iowa staff will host four regional forums May 13-14 to discuss the commercial development and revitalization needs of Iowa’s urban areas.

The Urban Neighborhood program will be similar to Main Street Iowa in that it will offer designated districts business improvement, design, organization and promotion services and those districts will be given priority for certain grants. For blighted urban districts, it could also offer services to improve safety and cleanliness. Only districts within one of Iowa’s nine Metropolitan Statistical Areas that are not the city’s central business core will be considered for the program.

Funding for the Urban Neighborhood Main Street District program was made possible in part because of Gov. Chet Culver’s request to increase the Main Street Iowa budget last year, said Jim Miller, an urban neighborhood consultant for Main Street Iowa. With a little more than $1 million in funding this year, Main Street Iowa also was able to admit four more communities to its Main Street Iowa program (now taking applications every year rather than every other year), and hire a business consultant to work with the designated districts.

Miller hopes to start taking applications for the new program this summer and select five communities as early as the end of August.

Beaverdale will likely become the first pilot project after having applied to the Main Street Iowa program several years ago. Because Beaverdale is larger than most Main Street Iowa communities at about 10,000 residents and is not being the core business district for Des Moines, Main Street Iowa staff began discussing the need for the urban neighborhood program.

Beaverdale Main Street Initiative, a nonprofit organization formed more than a year ago to work on economic development efforts in that neighborhood, is still in the process of determining its short- and long-term goals, but some immediate steps include putting in permanent flower planters, promoting the area and working with developers and building owners to make sure new and existing developments complement the area. Long term, the group could look at streetscape improvements and providing incentives to businesses for building improvements.

Main Street Iowa’s benefit will be its technical assistance. “If they give us the skills for our volunteers, we can become more self-sufficient as a community and not have to rely as much on public and private funding,” said Stephanie Walsmith, the organization’s executive director.

Miller said his staff has only brainstormed about other communities that could be a part of the new program in Des Moines, such as Highland Park and East 14th Street, but is looking forward to the public discussions to better understand what neighborhoods need assistance.

“I’ll be the first to admit, we’re creating it as we go,” Miller said. “We’ll see; hopefully we’ll learn some things at the four events that we didn’t know before we got there.”

The closest Urban Neighborhood Main Street District forum to Des Moines will be held on May 13 at 4 p.m. at the Octagon Center for the Arts, 427 Douglas Ave., Ames. For more information on the new program, go to www.iowalifechanging.com/community.