Student participants in the Kids Create Natick Center program work on their redesigns of Natick’s downtown.

A waterfall on the Natick Common, a community center along Main Street, a café with structured parking at Middlesex Street and a pedestrian-friendly artists’ colony on Adams Street.

If this sounds like a redesign of downtown by Natick’s planning officials, think again. The five-week, 10-hour collaborative session to recreate the center was recently completed by a dozen middle school and high school students. The youthful participants – armed with felt-tip pens, cardboard and colored construction paper – were given the task of reshaping a district that needs revitalization.

“Natick Center needs a place for kids to hang out because right now there isn’t one,” said Matt Schneider, whose design of a drop-in center, created with fellow student Spencer Cohen, included a skywalk for safe passage along busy Route 27.

Funded with a $2,200 grant from the Boston Foundation for Architecture, the Kids Create Natick Center program allowed the students to participate in town planning and shape their future. The project provided youngsters the opportunity to demonstrate how they want the center to look in coming years. Working with a pair of architects, the students were given maps and the space to create collages, drawings and models. Natick Center Assoc. donated $500, making it possible for the program to be offered for free.

“The idea is to embarrass adults into action,” said Ann Sussman, one of the architects who guided the students. “These kids showed that they are stakeholders in the neighborhood. Look what kids can do.”

Matt and Spencer’s community center, for example, also would include an Olympic-sized pool for students. The town’s winter swim team lacks a pool and must drive to Wayland for practice. “You’d come into the lobby and there’d be a regulation-size pool and a kiddie pool, the gym would be on the second floor, as well as an arcade, exercise room, food court, function room available for rental and a roof garden,” said Matt of the plan he co-designed.

‘So Creepy’
Molly and Sarah McEahern, whose mother has one of the artist’s studios on Adams Street, said their goal is to spruce up the street with awnings, flower boxes and a raised wooden walkway that invites the public into the space.

“My mother complains that no one ever visits the studios because the street is so creepy,” said Molly. “Our idea is to create an environment that attracts attention for artists to advertise their work.”

Abby Craig said the potholed street is unsafe for pedestrians and as a result, cars and trucks use it as a shortcut. “It needs to be repaved because it looks more like an alley than a street,” she said. “The sidewalk is scary and unsafe in the winter and repaving the road will make it friendlier.”

Alex Barr, a student who found a historic picture of Natick Center from the 1800s with a water fountain in the downtown, said the attraction should be recreated. “I’d like to see the fountain return because it was an important landmark,” he said.

One of the problems with Natick Center is the lack of parking, according to Aly Goldman. In response, the Natick High School senior designed a café and a multi-level parking garage.

Matt and Spencer set their sights on the Natick Common and added a few elements that could lure more people to the green space. “We wanted to redesign the common because it’s outdated and would benefit from a bigger and better gazebo,” Spencer said. “Our vision is to install a fish pond and make it a destination. On a hot summer day, a pair of fountains would spruce up the place and make it feel more alive with more trees and more flowers.”

Avgial Shimshoni, an architect who also guided the program, said the students had wide latitude in design and decided which projects to undertake. There were no limits on what they could imagine, she added.

“We left it open to them because our hope was to let their imaginations fly,” she said. “The idea was to make an impact and express an idea. It was not about solving the immediate problem because transforming any space can’t be done in 10 hours. Kids chose their own place to redesign.”

The student project comes as the redesigned Natick Mall is about to open in September with a new name and more upscale stores. The 500,000-square-foot expansion known as the Natick Collection will include Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, luxury boutiques, specialty stores and restaurants. The mall also will feature new tile and wood floors, glass handrails, contemporary ceilings and new landscaping, as well as a redesigned food court. Adjacent to the shopping center will be a 115-unit condominium complex, called Nouvelle at Natick, with units priced from $425,000 to $1.5 million

But Sussman said while the new mall is getting all the attention, it raises the question of how to keep Natick Center thriving. While the new mall offers luxury condos above the mall, historic buildings in the downtown above the stores are underused and could be turned into housing, she said.

“Across town, Natick’s identity is being set by a mall developer, but within a few hours the students said that Natick Center needed a nightclub, a place for a gym, better restaurants, a Dunkin’ Donuts, a pool, a skywalk, public bathrooms, a playground, more trees. What they are really saying it that the mall is not really for us,” she said. “We have to start showing a new way that is less about cars and more human-centric. The kids get it, and they don’t even have their learner’s permits [to drive] yet.”