Approximately 15,000 people came out for Ames Main Street’s RAGBRAI party (on a Tuesday night!), which featured 12 bands and 20 food trucks. This photo of the Spazmatics concert was taking from an upper floor apartment window by downtown resident Nitin Gadia.

Last month, Downtown Ames hosted a festival for the 46th annual RAGBRAI race (The Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa). Every year, the bike ride takes a different route through Iowa, stopping in a different city each night. The last time RAGBRAI came through town was in 2008, before Ames joined the Main Street program. That year, the festival was held in a field near Iowa State University because downtown was not a place you wanted to invite a crowd of people to visit—too many vacant buildings and dilapidated facades.

Times have changed! That Tuesday night in July, Ames Main Street hosted the largest crowd it’s ever seen by far—15,000 attendees filled downtown for concerts and food trucks. (The next-largest event was their annual Fourth of July parade, clocking in at 6,000 attendees.) Five blocks of Main Street and three side streets were closed for stages with a lineup of 12 bands. Downtown bars and restaurants were packed to capacity from about 2:00 p.m. until they closed. Festival attendees said this year’s downtown event was the best RAGBRAI party in many, many years. 

“Fifteen years ago, no one came to downtown Ames—it was a dying part of our community,” explained Cindy Hicks, Ames Main Street Cultural District Executive Director. Since becoming a Main Street America community under Main Street Iowa nine years ago, all that has changed. “That Tuesday [of RAGBRAI] —that’s right a Tuesday—we hosted a crowd of over 15,000 people: wall-to-wall people for three blocks! Ames Main Street is thriving in the middle of Iowa!”