Craig Downtown Façade Guidelines and Concepts

The downtown core of Craig, Colorado is currently gaining a great deal of support for economic development and revitalization efforts. Much of the thrust is from the Economic Development Commission and the Downtown Business Association. Along with the City of Craig, the UTA program was asked to aid the downtown in a visioning process for revitalizing facades. The goal was to inspire downtown business owners to revamp and revitalize storefronts so that people would want to hang out, shop and socialize downtown. Another goal of the city is to establish a façade improvement program to aid the downtown businesses in this effort and to show city support of the process. The city invited business to volunteer their façades for design improvements and assembled a steering committee to aid in the process.

The UTA design team began by assembling the historic photos of downtown to perform an assessment of the past architectural fabric that once existed and compare that to what is seen today. This aided in identifying precedents that could then be shared at a stakeholder meeting to better understand the character of downtown and gain valuable feedback. The students also began putting together design guidelines which could be used to show how the façade improvement could be applied to the downtown buildings. These guidelines were presented to the stakeholders for comment and façade improvement elevations were also presented.

The final thrust of the project was to research numerous façade improvement programs and outline those for the city with recommendations. The UTA team supplemented this with funding sources to aid the city in starting a program as well as sources to aid business owners in identifying more funding opportunities. The city hopes to implement a basic façade improvement program in the near future and slowly begin the process of turning downtown around. Until then, they will encourage business owners to take small step to redress their facades.

CCCD Team: Anna Chmel and Thomas Maderick
Field Coordinator: Chris Endreson
Local Participants: City of Craig Administration and Council, Craig Economic Development Commission, Downtown Business Association