Comprehensive plan shapes redevelopment
Comprehensive plan shapes redevelopment
By Mark Collins Friday, 12 June 2009
New plan would replace 30-year-old document
Of the ten criterion set forth by city charter, which do you feel is most important in Central Austin?
AUSTIN — After 30 years, the City of Austin is looking to replace its comprehensive plan, a document that directs the city council’s policies on growth and development.
“When you do a comprehensive plan you are sort of saying everybody that lives here, works here, owns a business here, owns property here is a partner in doing the plan,” said Garner Stoll, assistant director of the Neighborhood Planning and Zoning Department. “It affects everyone.”
The 176-page comprehensive plan in place currently, the Austin Tomorrow Plan, was created during the ’70s and adopted by council in 1979. At the time, the city’s population was around 340,000 and the city limits did not extend out of Travis County. Today, the population and land area have more than doubled, leaving a majority of Austin under a plan that was written before it was even considered a part of the city.
“The previous plan is very much a product of its time,” said Mark Walters, a principal planner with the Neighborhood Planning and Zoning Department. “It had some good ideas, but that was over 30 years ago. Back when this plan was written such issues as climate change, sustainability and even homeless[ness] were not even on the radar.”
At the drawing board
The new comprehensive plan will consist of two parts: where the city is going and how it will get there. Beyond that, the city charter sets out 10 things that must be included such as future land use, traffic circulation and mass transit, recreation and open space, housing, health and human services and more.
In central Austin where neighborhoods are already developed, the new comprehensive plan will provide a framework for redevelopment and assist in the creation of neighborhood plans.
“Cities are not static creatures, they renew themselves and are always redeveloping and changing. Healthy cities change,” Stoll said. “The plan should answer the questions: How do we want to change? Where are we going? What should we be spending money on for capital improvements? What regulatory systems should we have and how should we implement the public’s goals for the future?”
While the new document will provide policies intended to be used immediately, Stoll said the ultimate goal of the comprehensive plan is to create a planning process. In the process, the plan would be updated on a yearly basis and major revisions would be made every five years, extending the life of the document.
Best laid plans
In late April Austin City Council selected the consulting firm of Wallace Roberts & Todd to assist in the planning process. The firm will work with city employees throughout the two-year, $1.3 million dollar process to ensure Austin’s specific needs are met.
“It’s really important to have people who do this for a living helping us,” Stoll said. “We need to have staff and the community involved, but to get the plan done at the quality Austin is going to expect, I think a consultant is almost essential.”
WRT is a national firm with experience creating comprehensive plans on all scales from neighborhoods and small towns to large-sized cities, including the rebuilding of New Orleans.
“The holistic approach is a big hallmark of our company,” WRT Principal and Project Manager David Rouse said. “We’re multi-disciplinary in that we do planning, urban design, landscape architecture and architecture, but city and regional planning have been a central focus of what we’ve done since the firm was founded in 1963.”
Rouse said WRT has assembled a team of sub-consultants, almost all of which are based in Austin. The sub-consultants will specialize in certain aspects of the plan including public participation, transportation, infrastructure and civil engineering issues.
“Our approach emphasizes community involvement through a process we call values-driven planning,” Rouse said. “What we do through this process is help the community give voice to its values and aspirations for the future, and that is what shapes the plan.”
City staff has started working with WRT on a scoping framework, which is the general document that will dictate what the city wants the consultant to achieve with the comprehensive plan.
The city’s goal is to host the first public open house for the comprehensive plan in fall 2009. Stoll said the city will focus on three areas to ensure proper community involvement: maintaining a city-wide perspective, spreading meetings geographically throughout the city and making sure ethnic groups have representation.
“It is normal for an active, engaged community like Austin to jump ahead, but we want to make sure all the important issues are covered,” Stoll said. “Right now we’re trying to set up a neutral table and inviting everybody to come.”
