Stow City Center
WWBD Consulting and the City of Stow engaged Art x Love to help with research, strategy, and design for the Stow City Center: Play for All Project. This initiative was conceived as an exciting way to engage residents in and equitable and inclusive process to co-create a new city center with a focus on upgrading the playground, adding a splash pad, improving amenities, and programming for the park. Art x Love led development and implementation of a Community Visioning Day to coincide with Stow’s annual Pizza Palooza community event.
We tailored our research to be highly accessible and interactive for the Community Visioning Day. We wanted to focus on community feedback and ideas for Stow City Center’s playground, splash pad, amenities, and activities. Attendees were given tokens to cast votes for their preferred features and ideas, while our team recorded their reasons and rationale. More than 400 people participated in our survey, generating more than 3,000 datapoints to guide and inform future development.
Community input was segmented between kids, teens, adults, and seniors to gain strategic insight toward specific priorities and preferences among each age group. Research leveraged key insights and learnings to catalyze the community and help City leaders and residents align on a plan to support and invest in a new long-term vision for Stow City Center. Since completing this project, the City of Stow has made significant investments to the City Center, following the community’s lead from this strategic research.
