The Borough Assembly voted July 27th to repeal the Vision Fairbanks plan 6-3. An amendment to keep the goals of the plan in place while a new plan is developed was defeated 5-4. The Kassel Administration will move forward to develop a new plan for downtown.
The Downtown Association itself was among the first eighteen months ago to declare the Vision Plan obsolete, no longer useful in encouraging and shaping downtown’s growth. The Downtown Association assembled a short list goals that would improve the day-to-day delivery of Borough and (mainly) City services downtown. When it sought the endorsement of those goals by those governments, it turned out that others – namely DOT, FMATS, the Polaris Working Group and the Borough’s Community Planning Department – shared the view that the plan’s specificity could constrain or unduly complicate progress on public and private projects downtown. Mayor Kassel offered that it was time for the Borough’s Community Planning Department to develop a new plan.