This summer’s Bantam Jeep Community Art Project, sponsored by Butler Downtown, will provide a vibrant touch to the business district that not only will build on the city’s history, but add another element to the community’s goal of being a magnet to tourist traffic.

Jeep sculptures, actually wooden relief profiles, which will be on public display between June 26 and Sept. 5, also will be a great asset for the Butler County Tourism and Convention Bureau’s Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival scheduled for Aug. 12 to 14.

Here’s how the art project will work:

Four-foot-by-eight-foot “blanks” — two-dimensional wooden reliefs of a Bantam Jeep — will be sold to individuals, businesses or groups, but only with the stipulation that purchasers have a place to display them, so they can be seen and accessed by the public.

Buyers of the blanks will have the option of decorating them themselves or hiring an artist or someone else to prepare the displays in a family friendly style.

The 70 blanks are to be ready for distribution by the end of May, providing about a month for the decorating to be completed.

While the project isn’t a new or exclusive idea to Butler — similar projects based on other themes have been held in various other cities, such as the dinosaur statues in Pittsburgh — it nonetheless has the potential to attract tourists, if display of the jeeps is coordinated to achieve the optimum effect.

Projects like the Bantam Jeep art project are the kind of thing needed to keep people from outside the area interested in what the city has to offer, while also allowing local artists to express their talents and creativity. Also, downtown merchants might be beneficiaries of the project, if people who come here to see the Jeep display choose to stop to sample what downtown stores and restaurants have to offer.

Downtown merchants, whether they buy a Jeep or not, should try to do something special with their storefronts or within the confines of their business to build upon the enthusiasm and hometown pride that the art project will be expressing. Butler Downtown should make itself available to provide suggestions to those with inquiries about what they can do — and even what they shouldn’t do.

The art project can be characterized as a winning idea, even before finished Jeep cutouts begin showing up at downtown locales.