City To Kick Off Comprehensive Plan Sept. 10
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City resident Doug Champ asked city officials to make sure the public's thoughts are included in the upcoming comprehensive plan and zoning code update.
His request was fulfilled – in less than 15 seconds. City officials said during this week's Housing Committee meeting that the public kickoff for public input for the two plans will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 10 at Wicked Warren's on Third Street.
"I know a little bit of stuff has happened internally for the so-called autonomous stakeholders, but the real stakeholders are the community, the residents of Jamestown," Champ said. "They are the stakeholders of the comprehensive plan."
Crystal Surdyk, city development director, responded that a save the date event had been posted on the city's website and Facebook pages, though the location hadn't been secured until earlier this week.
Champ also asked about creating a citizens' advisory committee for the comprehensive plan, something Surdyk said is also likely to happen.
The Jamestown City Council approved a contract earlier this year to contract with C&S Companies for $200,000 to draft and deliver both updates. Money is coming from a $100,000 grant from the state Department of State and $100,000 from the city's American Rescue Plan Act allocation.
The last comprehensive plan and major update to the city's zoning code both came in 1998.
"There will be a long and robust community engagement component to this," Surdyk said. "We were very specific when we looked at the teams that submitted proposals for these plans. We wanted community engagement to be a very high priority."
In addition to private meetings, C&S Companies put a blackboard in a downtown business to allow the public to give early comments on things they would like to see included in the comprehensive plan. That blackboard was roundly criticized by some city residents who mistook the blackboard as a replacement for public comment on the city's Facebook page.
The city's last comprehensive plan was initiated in 1994 under the direction of the Jamestown Urban Renewal Agency. That plan highlighted the underutilization of the Chadakoin River, considered "one of Jamestown's most valuable assets." It was eventually released in 1998 and recommended improvements to the river to boost its recreational, aesthetic and other public benefits.The most recent plan also acknowledged the weakening of the downtown commercial corridor due to the loss of retailers. The gradual loss of once-prominent department stores and the replacement of smaller specialty businesses with big box stores "has caused a generational change in the use of the downtown," the plan stated.
A recommendation in the 1998 comprehensive plan called for the redevelopment of the downtown area with mixed uses of office, housing, government, entertainment, recreation and tourism.
"There are bits of the comprehensive plan that were very successful," Surdyk told The Post-Journal earlier this year. "We made quite a bit of headway with the Riverwalk itself. The Urban Design Plan and the subsequent Urban Design Plan update that really, I think, built upon that outdated comprehensive plan -- kind of brought us into where we are today."