Got five minutes?
The Fairbanks North Star Borough Planning Department is taking comment on a new downtown plan through the end of the year. You know: Things you love, things you’d like to see more of, and things you don’t like so much.
The Planning Department has some easy-to-use tools to help you weigh in. Go to the Downtown Plan page and take a survey and/or place comments on a cool interactive map (where you can also see what other people said).
Comments run the gamut – from making 2nd Avenue a pedestrian mall to leveling the Polaris Hotel to reducing the plight of chronically inebriated people to creating housing and businesses where none exists – and it is significant that many of the comments to this Borough plan involve City powers.
A steering committee (whose members include Sabrina Binkley, Jerry Cleworth, Christmas Cowell, Jackson Fox, Deb Hickok, Chris Miller, Geri Simon, Planning Director Christine Nelson, Brenda Riley and Buki Wright) will help the Borough distill a draft plan from the public comments. At that time, we’ll all get an initial indication of how the city will support or participate in a downtown plan and its implementation – which is important.
What we’re aiming for in this new plan is coordinated efforts to support and attract residential and business growth downtown for the community’s benefit. A goals-based, flexible plan that fans downtown’s energy, not a prescriptive plan that seeks to create downtown’s energy.
Make comment to the plan. And stay tuned . . . . Contact david@downtownfairbanks.com or 452-8676 with questions.