Dawn Castro
The Valdosta Daily Times
VALDOSTA —
The City of Valdosta and the Central Valdosta Development Authority hosted a public town hall kick-off meeting for the Downtown Master Plan Thursday.
This meeting included an introduction of the planning team, an explanation of the planning process, a review of existing conditions information and the administration of the community preference survey.
Present to hear what the consultants had to say for the downtown area of Valdosta were central Valdosta development authority board members, downtown business association board members, individual business and property owners, city staff, downtown advocates and community members.
Rebecca Shirley, director of Valdosta Main Street, said the City of Valdosta and the Central Valdosta Development Authority are jointly sponsoring the creation of a Downtown Master Plan. “This plan will be used to stimulate and create economic redevelopment to guide downtown Valdosta’s future growth and development and to market the downtown district,” she said.
The partnership of three consultant groups, John Skach, senior associate from Atlanta’s Urban Collage, Inc., DeWayne Carver, senior project manager for Hall Planning and Engineering, Inc, out of Tallahassee, Fla and Ken Bleakly, President of Bleakly Advisory Group from Atlanta, collaborated on points of interest for the area. They each touched on the wants and needs for “specifically” central downtown Valdosta.
Some of the points raised were transportation issues in the downtown area (look at number of people and decide what transportation need there is), go back to a two- way street system instead of all the one-ways, more bicycle and vehicle parking, re-routing the big trucks, diversity of offerings for the different audiences, events that provide a “taste” of downtown experience, extend the hours of downtown, e,g, a mix of day and night users (after dinner, people don’t have anywhere to shop) and strengthening the investments that have been made in the downtown perservation, just to name a few.
The consultants also talked about making the area more appealing to tourism and making better use of the public space.
A slide show presentation offered some suggestions as to what would attract people to the area. The particpants were also able to ask questions and voice concerns they may have.
Shirley added that the result they hoped to gain from the kick-off meeting was primarily to educate the participants regarding downtown area opportunities and challenges, as well as a framework vision to guide the development of alternatives and strategies in the Conceptual Master Plan Phase for Downtown Valdosta. Following this workshop, the planning team will compile and clarify the collective vision and review this resulting vision with the Central Valdosta Development Authority, the City of Valdosta, and the Steering Committee for verification.
“This is our downtown,” she said, “so it’s our responsibility to give feedback to our consultant groups about our concerns and suggestions in order to be prepared for quality growth in the future.”
Thursday’s meeting was one of three the city will have. The next meeting will be in August at the St. Paul’s AME Chruch on South Ashley Street. For more information go to www.valdostamainstreet.com.
