Comprehensive plan
Emporia's civic road map is nearing its final form
By Joey Berlin
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
The city comprehensive plan is nearing completion after more than two years of public discussion and work, and an open house on Thursday evening will give residents another chance to comment on what they would like to see in the plan.
The 5 p.m. meeting in the Little Theater at White Auditorium will be a town hall-type, come-and-go session, City Engineer Keith Beatty said. It will last until 8:30 p.m.
“Everybody has seen most of the changes, but we want kind of the last comments before we take it to the planning commission and the city commission for approval,” Beatty said.
It’s hoped that the plan will be finalized and unveiled sometime in the next few months.
What is the city comprehensive plan? The plan is a document intended to project city development in the coming years. It examines zoning and future trends for industrial, commercial and residential development. Beatty said it’s a planning tool that helps the planning commission and the city commission decide on potential rezoning of areas, such as when someone requests a rezoning from residential to commercial in order to start a business.
“If somebody comes in and wants to do something a little different,” Beatty said, “we have something that says, ‘No, we really don’t want to do that, because that’s not part of our plan,’ or ‘Yes, that makes sense, our plan shows that.’”
The August 2007 draft copy of the plan is available on the city Web site, www.emporia-kansas.gov.
How often is it updated? The city’s last comprehensive plan was finalized in 1998. Beatty said the new plan should be reviewed with the planning commission again in about five years, followed by a more in-depth look five years after that.
“Ten years from now, we would hopefully look at the entire plan again,” he said. “Some of the decisions that were made, were they correct and should we be looking at a different path? A lot of things can happen in 10 years.”
Who was involved in the drafting of the plan? “Everybody is probably the best answer,” Beatty said. It began with input at public sessions in October 2005. Residents were able to mark on maps which areas they think should be residential and which should be commercial. The planning commission and city commission had their input, and city staff polled members of the police, fire and parks department about their views.
“I think we’ve done a good job of listening to the public and listening to the commissioners and giving the community what they want in a plan,” Beatty said. “Now, not everybody will agree with the plan, but we’ve done our best to listen to everybody, and we’ve presented all that to the commissioners.”
Focus areas for the plan: There were three focus areas, Beatty said: The Emporia State University area, the downtown area and the Newman Regional Health area.
Also examined were potential commercial land uses in industrial areas, including the vicinity of the old Modine Manufacturing building.
“I think some of it is simply reserving enough areas for new growth in industrial uses,” City Manager Matt Zimmerman said. “We had some input from (Emporia) Main Street on the issue that they’d like to see the downtown parts of the plan reflect more of a creation of a black-and-gold district, with uses that would be conducive to students at the university, (and) maintaining a combination industrial and retail corridor out at the turnpike interchange.”
Thursday’s open house: The city’s consultant on the plan, Brian Comer of the Kansas City firm HNTB, will be at the informal event and available to answer any questions. The open house isn’t a forum, Zimmerman said, as it is strictly for public input.
“You can bring the kids, and they can kind of see what’s going on,” Beatty said. “It’s a big room. We anticipate we’ll have maybe four to five to anywhere to 20 people in the room at the same time, if that. We encourage even high school kids that are taking government class to come out and take a look at the plan and how we do planning.”