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Participate in downtown Vision Survey
Public asked to assess positives and negatives of downtown
Online survey will help set city's priorities in downtown plan.
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By Kate Miller Morton
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
The public will get a chance starting this week to weigh in on what they want downtown to look like 20 years from now.
City officials and their lead consultant on the downtown plan, ROMA Design Group, plan to post an online survey this week at downtownaustinplan.org to solicit comments. They have spent the past few months talking to special interest groups ranging from downtown property owners and residents to affordable housing advocates and cycling enthusiasts.
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"One of the things we're trying to be careful and conscientious about is that downtown belongs to everybody," ROMA principal Jana McCann said.
"We want everybody in the region to participate in downtown, and we, therefore, want to understand what are people's priorities, concerns and great ideas and not just the sort of near-in downtown stakeholders."
Participants will be asked why and how often they go downtown, how they get there and how they feel about the experience. They also will be asked to weigh in on how the city could make downtown a more desirable place to live and visit and what should be preserved as the area changes.
Anyone can take the confidential survey, regardless of whether they live in the city, and the questions will be offered in English and Spanish.
Austin has conducted numerous studies about downtown, but most of those looked at isolated issues such as the number of retailers or the condition of sidewalks and streets.
This newest plan, which the city is spending $600,000 to develop, will go beyond the zoning and land-use issues that are typically addressed in neighborhood plans.
It will lay out a vision for how downtown should be redeveloped in the next 20 years, tackling controversial topics such as building heights, view corridors, the sale of public land and affordable housing.
"The project as a whole is designed to establish a vision for downtown and a vision that has some legs to it that can endure over 15, 20, 25 years and be a guiding light informing private and public decision-making," said Jim Robertson of the city's neighborhood planning and zoning department and co-project manager for the downtown plan.
Robertson said the plan will be about more than just what the city would like to see in the area bounded by Interstate 35, Lady Bird Lake, Lamar Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
"The role of the downtown plan is to identify and put in place concrete steps that get us from where we are to achieving that vision," Robertson said.
"That may include things like changing development code; it may be coming up with an implementable plan for infrastructure improvements downtown and means for financing those improvements."
ROMA is expected to deliver the first phase of the project by the end of the year, including an overall vision and a prioritized list of things the city needs to do first to help make that vision a reality.
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