On Sunday at the Figge Art Museum, young adults met with city leaders and up-and-coming professionals for an Ideas Festival put on by OurCity Movement.
The event was a way for all the generations to meet and brainstorm on different ideas for revitalizing the downtown area.
Pablo Haake is the founder of OurCity Movement, a grassroots initiative full of high school students who meet with local millenials to inspire more downtown revitalization. He said he wanted to make downtown Davenport more user-friendly because lot of his younger peers don't have anything to do when they go downtown.
"It's meant to really start a domino effect of people hearing their ideas and taking pride in their downtown because both of those are key elements," said Haake.
At Sunday's event, several city leaders spoke to an auditorium full of people, including Scott Tunnicliff, executive director of the Hilltop Campus Village, and Mayor Bill Gluba.
There was also a panel discussion with community leaders who talked about the state of downtown Davenport, and their ideas for the future. The panel speakers included Sean Moeller, founder of Daytrotter, Kyle Carter, executive director of the Downtown Davenport Partnership, and Aiden Landman, director of Young Professionals.
"There's the big stuff like City Square and multi-million dollar developments, but some of the best stuff that people love are just a new coffee shop, a new place to buy shoes, a pocket park opening up," said Carter. "That's the kind of stuff that gives you the fabric of a community."
After the panel discussion, people broke into a couple dozen circle-table discussions to brainstorm on ideas for downtown revitalization.
"There's a lot of underutilized space in downtown Davenport," said Hannah Hansen, a junior at Davenport Central. "We had an idea, where the bandshell is, we could have outdoor movies showings in the summer time."
"One of the really cool ideas I heard was using all the potential we have in the downtown area," said Daniel Nunez, a senior at Davenport Central. "Like movie theaters, opening more restaurants, really just kind of bringing this area alive."
"They have the ideas, they know what is current, they know what's coming, and they see a couple of years down the road what the trend is," said Mike Trujillo, a teacher at Davenport Central High School, who is also part of OurCity Movement.
At the end of the event, the ideas were written down on post-its and collected, all to be shared at the Davenport School Board meeting on Monday, and worked on in the future.