The Academy Street High School is one step closer to being redesign with Design Alabama director Gina Clifford meeting with city officials Thursday.

Design Alabama has chosen Troy as their free summer Designplace project, specifically looking at the Academy Street High School and speaking with the local community about what they would like to see at the historic site.

“Designplace is a program of our organization that is an opportunity for mayors who participated in our Mayor’s Design Summit to bring in design professionals to work on specific design issues in their communities,” Clifford said.

To accomplish their work, Clifford said a team of five design professionals will be coming in on the first weekend of August to hold two public meeting and work on some initial concepts for what a redesign might look like.

“We want to immerse ourselves into the community and really get a feel for the look of the site and get other ideas from the community,” Clifford said. “We’ll have a public meeting the Thursday night that we’re there. It will be an opportunity to give feedback at what they might like to see that our team can work on while they’re there. In that time, we’ll work through the concept and do some drawings, some basic stuff at first to present Saturday and get feedback.”

Once the team leaves, they’ll go back over the results of the meetings and work for a few months to come up with a final “book” that gives a design plan.

Clifford said that will help the city moving forward in the design and in obtaining grants for the project.

District 5 Councilwoman Wanda Moultry said they used the Thursday meeting to take care of some preliminary ideas.

“We just had a brainstorm going,” Clifford said. “What we thought the place could be used for is a host of programs for everyone from youth to seniors … It’s going to develop a sense of ownership, pride and self-esteem for people in that area.”

Mayor Jason Reeves said the city is excited to be able to move forward with the project.

“I think the process is going to be very good in regards to collecting information and getting ideas,” Reeves said. “It will bring a creative and diverse group of design professionals to help us with this space.”

The design team will be in Troy from Aug. 2 – 4 at the library with meeting times to be determined.