The city’s latest draft of its comprehensive plan takes a long-term look with a short-range view.
Most of the anticipated development is inside the city limits. The few areas of expansion are mostly along familiar lines, such as Americus Road, or West U.S. Highway 50 and the “spaghetti bowl” area: places where the city’s infrastructure is either in place or can easily be extended.
In short, it’s a plan that consolidates rather than makes big, dramatic strokes. And according to consultant Brian Comer, that seems to be what Emporia wants.
“It’s something I’m seeing more and more,” said Comer, senior planner for HNTB Corp. which helped create the plan. “It’s refreshing that a community wants to grow smart and be thoughtful about future uses.”
Comer and the city are still taking comments on the plan, which is set to be presented to the city commission in January. Suggestions should be directed to the city engineer’s office at 343-4260.
Some of the features of the draft plan as it now stands include:
• Employment districts (purple) — not quite an industrial zone, but not purely commercial, the “employment district” is suggested by the plan as a mixed-use area. The combination allows uses similar to that of Dolly Madison, where a manufacturer or warehouser might also have a sales outlet.
• Shadow platting (green with yellow stripes) — These are residential areas of at least 3 acres where a person can specify future development without having to do a full plat. Instead, developers can sketch in where roads, utility easements and the like would go once development is ready to get underway.
• Newman — Once upon a time, the hospital was looking to grow eastward. Now any future growth and parking will go to the south, maybe as far as Ninth Avenue. And if things get really built up, Newman will probably start looking for another location altogether, but that’s likely to be outside the 15-20 year time frame called for here, Comer said.
• Black and Gold — Both the downtown and Emporia State University have been upbeat about a proposed “black and gold” district on the north end of Commercial Street, with college-oriented businesses and upper-story residential possibilities. The only hitch so far is parking: residential areas would have to arrange additional spaces so that retail on-street parking isn’t tied up.
• Hit the trail — “Folks want to have some multi-modal bike and pedestrian opportunities to connect to the amenities in town,” Comer said. That’s why a system of trails that reaches out into the flood plain also ties into the major roads in town. Those areas, Comer said, will either need extra-wide sidewalks or to have an actual trail built near the road, for safety reasons.
• On top of spaghetti — Ten years ago, no one would have anticipated a lot of commercial development near the Emporia turnpike interchange. Now, as befits its red color on the map, it’s one of the hottest properties in town. And maximizing the opportunities there also fits the plan’s theme of keeping growth close to town. “There’s a lot of future commercial and employment growth there,” Comer said.
So what happens next? Once the city gets the draft plan, it’ll be time to decide what rules and regulations need to be changed to make things happen. That means more talking with the city commission, the planning commission and the public.
“Some of these fundamentally sound great,” City Engineer Keith Beatty said. “But as we get into the rules and regulations, there may have to be some changes because of the law and what we’re capable of enforcing.”
Still, the end is in sight.
“I think it’s going to be a strategic revision,” Comer said of the regulatory changes ahead. “For the most part, we’re hoping that a lot of things are unchanged.”