Downtown Master Plan – An Overview
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{Picture from this site, where you can read the entire 1922 Asheville City Plan. Take a look at the planned park structure here!}
The Final Draft of the Downtown Master Plan is creation of consensus and compromise. Dedicated people from every cranny of our community devoted 5,000 hours of their time to hammer this thing out. Public input sessions were frequent and very well attended. So no matter where you land in assessing the DTMP, you can respect the process that went into creating it. At the end of this post is a list from the DTMP’s acknowledgements page (ii). It’s a list of all the folks whose input was key to coming up with solutions.
The plan is broken down into seven sections folded into three broader categories:
EXPERIENCING DOWNTOWN
Strategy 1: Enhance the Downtown Asheville experience by cultivating its creative, cultural, and historic character. (43)
Strategy 2: Expand convenient choices for Downtown access and mobility. (55)SHAPING DOWNTOWN
Strategy 3: Inaugurate an urban design framework to extend Downtown‘s sense of place and community. (65)
Strategy 4: Shape building form to promote quality of place. (79)
Strategy 5: Update Downtown design guidelines to be current, to be clear, and to promote sustainable development. (89)
Strategy 6: Make Downtown project review transparent, predictable, and inclusive of community input. (95)MANAGING DOWNTOWN
Strategy 7: Nurture a sustainable and resilient economy through active management of Downtown. (101)
Each of these seven sections represents an important aspect in Asheville’s downtown development strategy, and all seven must be taken into consideration if we hope to have an integrated, efficient strategy going forward.
The DTMP was presented to Council last night. In two weeks Council will hold a public hearing on the Plan. Staff suggests they spend part of June getting more info before deciding whether to accept the Plan and in what form. So when will we see a decision? I’ll guess that by the end of June, City Council will decide to adopt this plan. The devil will then be in the implementation and prioritization details.
Among other things, the plan calls for creation and/or changes regarding: Artists’ Resource Center, Pack Square Cultural District, Civic Center, park and ride, the 2008 Bicycle Plan, formation of five downtown districts, revision of design ordinances, creating a “concise official checklist that consolidates the UDO, Downtown Asheville Design Guidelines, and new design criteria”, green incentives, fundamentally change the role of City Council in decision making, and create a “Community Improvement District” Authority to manage downtown needs.
So much to do. So little time.
Stay tuned for an examination of Section One.
What are your initial thoughts about the DTMP?
AUTHORIZING CITY COUNCIL:
Mayor Terry M. Bellamy
Vice-Mayor Jan Davis
Carl Mumpower
Robin Cape
Brownie Newman
Holly Jones
Bryan Freeborn
CURRENT COUNCIL MEMBERS:
Bill Russell
Kelly Miller
DOWNTOWN COMMISSION:
Pat Whalen, Chair
John Rogers, Vice-Chair
Peter Alberice
Dwight Butner
Guadalupe Chavarria
Jan Davis
Joe Eckert
Brad Galbraith
Byron Greiner
Jesse Plaster
Kitty Love
Pam Myers
DOWNTOWN MASTER PLAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE:
Peter Alberice
Jen Bowen
David Brown
Dwight Butner
Tom Cassidy
Jim Coman
Joyce Dorr
Joe Eckert
John Grant
Rebecca Hecht
Larry Holt
Kitty Love
Kim MacQueen
Kelly Miller
Joe Minicozzi
Stephanie Pankiewicz
Chris Peterson
John Rogers
Elizabeth Russell
Jim Samsel
Albert Sneed
B.J. Snow
LaVoy Spooner
Ruth Summers
Chuck Tessier
Stephanie Twitty
Cindy Weeks
Pat Whalen
PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION:
Steven Sizemore, Chair
Cindy Weeks, Vice-Chair
Tom Byers
Nathaniel Cannady
Darryl Hart
Jerome Jones
Mark Sexton
Gary L. Jackson, City
Manager
Robert W. Oast, Jr., City
Attorney
OFFICE OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT:
Sam Powers, Director
Janet Dack
Nikki Gunter
Brenda Mills
Stephanie Monson
PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT:
Judy Daniel, Director
Rita Baidas
Jessica Bernstein
Blake Esselstyn
Alan Glines
Stacy Merten
Shannon Tuch
PROJECT MANAGER
Sasha Vrtunski
