Plaza Premiere: San Luis to Celebrate in Style
For more than 100 years, San Luis, Colorado, has hosted its annual Santa Ana Festival, attracting visitors from near and far.
“ Former residents from all over the country come back home for this event,” said recently retired Town manager Susan Sanderford.
While always a special event, this year’ s festival is just a bit extra special.
“ This will be a coming-out party for our new civic plaza,” said Sanderford, who was a driving force in securing the grant funding needed to bring dreams of the plaza into reality.
With the new plaza as its centerpiece, the entire San Luis downtown district will be alive with bands, parades, and more than 50 vendors offering their wares during the festival.
“ For so long we’ ve needed an outdoor community gathering space, a space for entrepreneurs to set up,” Sanderson said.“ We’ ve wanted to provide a beautiful space in the center of town for a San Luis market, a place where local vendors can make money. And now we have it.”
Sanderson said, plans call for the plaza to regularly host a wide variety of community events, ranging from music and dance festivals, farmers’ markets and craft sales, to outdoor movies, food trucks, and spontaneous daily social gatherings.
Students initiated design concepts
The San Luis project has been unique in Esker’ s architectural experience because original ideas for the plaza design came from students at the University of Colorado through a grant Sanderson secured from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs( DOLA.) Follow-up grants from DOLA and the state of Colorado allowed for the Ayres team to fully develop the CU students’ concepts and oversee the subsequent construction of the plaza.
“ The budget for this project was tight, and we needed to get creative to work out a design that met the programmatic needs of the client while also representing the community’ s values and culture,” Land said.
Sanderson lauds the work done by Land and his team and looks forward to continuing to work with them on further development in San Luis.
What the future holds
Looking ahead, Sanderson said that other amenities – including seating, tables, food prep areas, a fire pit, and perhaps a water feature – will be added to the plaza as funding becomes available.
But first on the agenda is to decide what to do with a property the Town recently purchased that abuts the north side of the new plaza. Currently an old adobe house sits on the site, but Land is working with San Luis officials in exploring how they might redevelop the property when financial resources allow.
“ David will help us come up with ideas,” Sanderford said.“ Is the house worth saving? Should we enlarge the plaza? Build a business incubator space there? That’ s all down the road as we grow.”
“ Ayres will help us move our ideas and concepts forward,” Sanderson said.“ We really see Ayres as a partner with us in this.” But that’ s all in the future.
For now, Land said,“ The real celebration and story here is that this underserved community worked hard to make something happen in their town, and a multidisciplinary Ayres team helped them to realize their goals for the project.” www. AyresAssociates. com 11