Emporia Main Street will present its master plan for the downtown district to the Emporia-Lyon County Metropolitan Planning Commission at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
The meeting will be in the city conference room of the civic building, 518 Mechanic St.
The plan is the culmination of a process that started about two and a half years ago, according to Kayla Oney, executive director of Emporia Main Street. “It started as a grassroots thing, but actually starting the community-initiated development process that has come forward has been about a year,” she said.
The plan identifies the downtown district as running north to south from 12th Avenue to South Avenue and from west to east from Congress Street to Market Street.
“It’s basically a design guideline for the entire downtown district,” Oney said.
“It’s kind of like (the city’s) comprehensive plan,” said Kevin Hanlin, planning and zoning coordinator. “It’s just a guideline to help direct and influence development in that area.”
A series of meetings were held to gather information, hear concerns from the community and come up with specific goals. According to the plan, these goals are: to define the boundaries of the project area; to identify key components of the existing downtown area that are vital to the future health and growth of the district; to identify missing business types and amenities that would help create a more vital downtown, to serve residents and attract future university students and visitors; and to identify specific “use districts” within the area to create focus areas.
The plan identifies three specific segments within the downtown district and offers guidelines for the development of these districts in categories such as “adaptive reuse” of historic buildings, infill construction, architectural context, transportation development goals and streetscape ideas, all geared toward maintaining the district’s historical, cultural and aesthetic integrity.
The segments follow the city’s land use map and further identify possible uses. The Black and Gold Zone encompasses the area at the north end of Commercial Street, near ESU.
The area around Sixth Avenue and Commercial Street, the Civic Center, contains part of the Arts and Entertainment district, all of the Retail district, and part of the Civic, Professional and Commercial Services district as represented in the land use map.
The area around the railroad tracks at Commercial Street make up the Marketplace, which contains what the land use map identifies as part of the Professional district and all of the Multicultural Marketplace and Services district.
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