More than 100 architects, industrial designers, engineers, planners, and others spent long days on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday redesigning downtown Rochester during a charette at Midtown Plaza.

The process was unusual in that nearly all of the participants were design professionals. The public will get a look at their efforts on Friday, January 26, in an event hosted by the charette's organizer, the Rochester Regional Community Design Center. That takes place at Downtown United Presbyterian Church; displays of ideas from the charette will be available for viewing beginning at 6 p.m., and Design Center representatives will give a PowerPoint presentation at 7 p.m.

Charette participants were divided into five groups, to discuss individual areas of downtown. They brainstormed about housing, about the need for diversity and for a 24-hour downtown, about the importance of public spaces, about downtown as a work and commerce center.

Make on-street parking available on Main Street, turn South Avenue into a two-way street, create a shuttle system, build more parking garages, capitalize on the High Falls and develop alternative-energy enterprises: the ideas, says Heidi Zimmer-Meyer, president of the Rochester Downtown Development Corporation, ranged from the pragmatic to "blue-sky, way-out-of-the-box proposals."

Is all this just one more exercise that leads nowhere? Participants were cautioned to keep viability in mind, says the Design Center's Joni Monroe. The charette included some developers, and the Downtown Development Corporation had also met with developers and brokers to discuss downtown's development potential.

Downtown Rochester, noted a background sheet handed out at the charette, "has experienced startling decline over the past two decades." But, the sheet added, that decline "is surrounded by over a billion dollars in current and relatively recent investments in housing and mixed-used projects, office buildings, public facilities, and large scale infrastructure improvements."

The public does need to understand the complexity of downtown's future, says Zimmer-Meyer, particularly the complexity of redeveloping its two former retail anchors.

Midtown and Sibley's dominate downtown now, as they did during the city's retail peak, and what happens to them will affect everything else that happens downtown.

The proposal to create an Italian market at Midtown "changes everything dramatically," Zimmer-Meyer told charette participants. It could not only put life back into part of Midtown Plaza but it could also spur other retail nearby.

"There is a general sense that we are under-retailed" in the Greater Rochester area, said Zimmer-Meyer. The business expansion at Eastview Mall and in Webster wouldn't be taking place if retailers didn't think there was a market for more, she said.

It's not likely that the national retailers already operating in the suburban malls would open downtown stores, she said. But developers and brokers have told RDDC that if the Italian market becomes a reality, that could attract national retailers who don't have a presence in Monroe County now.

And, said Zimmer-Meyer, increased retail development would likely generate more housing development.

The Italian market proposal is by no means a certainty, however, and charette participants studying the Midtown-Sibley's area were instructed to develop two different plans: one with the market, one without.

In the end, what happens downtown will be principally up to market forces, although certainly Renaissance Square --- assuming that it will be built in one form or another --- will have an impact. What happens downtown will also be dependent, says Zimmer-Meyer, on building strong partnerships, between the city, the county, and the private sector.

The Design Center's Joni Monroe emphasizes that the charette and its follow-up were patterned after an effort in Providence, Rhode Island. And that effort resulted in a dramatic turn-around for the downtown area.