Design Team meets at the Legion Hall

The design:SD planning team spent an afternoon in Corsica on March 23. We met with the local Housing Commission and with the senior class from Corsica High School. We also further developed our plans for May 16-19. We’ll soon be releasing the event schedule.

The Corsica Commercial Club has set up a handful of committees to help coordinate the charrette (what is a charrette?), including a Food Committee and a Host Home Committee. The Food Committee will be in charge of coordinating/serving the meals and snacks/refreshments for the Design SD Team while they are in Corsica in May. The Host Home group is looking for families in the Corsica area who are willing to host a Design Team member for 3 nights. Host families will not need to feed your guest, just provide a place to sleep, shower, etc. If you’d like to help, just contact Nathan Hinker at the Avera Corsica Clinic.

design:SD Introduced at the Pancake Feed

The Design South Dakota team introduced the project to many Corsica area residents at the Corsica Commercial Club’s Customer Appreciation Days last Saturday. The Commercial Club served pancakes and sausages for free to hundreds of Corsica locals, while Jim Beddow, Ward Whitwam and I talked design and charrette with the locals.

Big thanks go to our friends at the Willmar Design Center in Willmar, MN (especially Bev Daugherty) for allowing us to borrow their charrette boards to use in our display. Also thanks to TSP Architects in Sioux Falls for lending us the display background, to Bobbi Gaukel at one8ty creative for designing the logo and handouts on super short notice, and to Nathan Hinker and the Corsica Commercial Club for inviting us to participate (and giving us the idea for the booth)!

 

Ward Whitwam, AIA and a member of the design:SD planning team, ran into an old friend (or maybe adversary?) at the pancake feed. Ward designed the Corsica Elementary School 39 years ago. At that time, Sid Hoekstra, who still lives in Corsica, was the School Board Chair. Sid and Ward recalled the arguments they had almost 40 years ago over the price of the project.

Ward also visited with the folks in the Douglas County Hospital booth. He learned they will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of building the hospital later this year. As it turns out, Ward also designed that building half a century ago!

Thanks to the Corsica community for the warm welcome!

Joe B.

(you can enlarge any of the above pictures by clicking on them)

RLC to spend 3 days in town

We have a pretty jam-packed schedule in Corsica this week. We’ll begin tonight (Thursday) with a workshop for the Corsica UProcess Team (we’ll be telling you more about this soon). Then on Friday morning we’ll be having breakfast with leaders from the Corsica Development Corp, Housing Commission, School District and City. Lindsey and I will be meeting with the senior class at CHS later in the morning.

Friday afternoon we’ll be hosting the design:South Dakota team at the Legion Hall for a planning session for the upcoming visit in May. In our spare time on Friday, we’ll be finishing up a couple more interviews. Then on Saturday, we’ll be hosting a booth at the Commercial Club’s free Customer Appreciation event at the Legion Hall. The booth will have great information on the design:SD team visit coming up this spring, and we’ll have a few architects from AIA South Dakota on hand too.

We won’t have a whole lot of free time, but if you would like to visit with any or all three of us sometime in the next few days, just drop us an email or give us a call. Or better yet, post a comment on this page. Our contact info is on the “About the Rural Learning Center” page of this site.

One more thing to share. We haven’t done a great job of posting to this blog in the past couple of months. We’ve been super busy, but that’s a lousy excuse. We promise to do a better job of keeping you updated on what we’re up to. It’s been great working with folks in the Corsica region!

take care.

RLC and Architects at Customer Appreciation on Saturday

On Saturday we will have a booth at the Commercial Club’s Customer Appreciation event at the Corsica Legion Hall. RLC staff and a handful of architects from AIA South Dakota will be on hand to visit with folks about an exciting project coming to Corsica in May.

The design:SD team will spend four intense days in town from May 16 to 19. The team is 20-30 professionals from all walks of design and community development. They will work with Corsica area residents to dream about the future, and illustrate that vision with drawings and ideas.

Thanks to support from grants, the event will be NO COST to the Corsica community! It is being sponsored by The Rural Learning Center and American Institute of Architects, along with the Corsica Commercial Club and Planning and Development District III.

Please visit our booth on Saturday! You can learn more about design:SD at designsd.org.

Joe Bartmann, The Rural Learning Center

Nathan Hinker and I showing off the new logo designed for the project.