Planners seek ideas for central Arkansas

Metroplan wants to tap the imaginations of central Arkansas residents to figure out what the region should look like in 30 years.

Thus, the moniker Imagine Central Arkansas for the transportation planning agency’s latest major update of its long-range plan for the region.

“We’re trying to unleash people’s imagination about what they see central Arkansas being halfway through the 21st century,” said Jim McKenzie, the agency’s executive director. “If we can harness the human imagination, that’s a really, really powerful tool.”

The previous two initiatives were dubbed Metro 2020 and Metro 2030. The latest update would have been Metro 2040, but an agency advisory groupthought a name change was in order.

“The committee decided they wanted to get away from the year and go in a new direction,” said Casey Covington, a transportation planner for the agency who is coordinating the initiative. “They wanted to be focused not so much on a year but the future in general.” The change in the scope of the update goes beyond the new name, however. Thanks in part to a U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department sustainable-community planning grant, the plan aims to look beyond transportation projects and figure out how they connect with the region’s land-use development, economy, health and other factors.

The plan will be “much broader, much more in-depth and more comprehensive than” previous plans, said McKenzie.

Armed with a plethora of social media and other technology, the agency is making its most concentrated effort todate to reach out to populations that historically haven’t participated in the planning process, including blacks, Hispanics and people with disabilities.

“Public outreach is the hardest part, but it’s also the most important part of the whole plan,” said CharlesCummings, chairman of Metroplan’s Regional Planning Advisory Council.

Imagine Central Arkansas will succeed Metro 2030, a $3.5 billion plan that includes road construction and other transportation projects, in part based on comments gleaned from public hearings and Metroplan’s own deliberations. The agency’s board of directors, composed of the region’s participating mayors and county judges, must approve the plan by January 2014.

The region encompassing Metroplan, which includes Faulkner, Lonoke, Pulaski and Saline counties, has received an average of $188 million annually in federal, state and local funding for road construction and transit, according to the agency. But the agency warns that some of that money, particularly at the federal level, could be at risk in the coming decades.

And whatever plan is developed, it must be “fiscally constrained,” meaning the cost of the projects must not exceed anticipated revenue, Cummings said. “That will make it challenging.”

For now, the initiative is trying to make it fun for residents, taking photographs of different participants holding a white board on which they write their ideas for central Arkansas.

Longtime local activist Annie Abrams is pictured with a white board on which she wrote: “I imagine Central Arkansas as a part of a place that is vital to the progressive movement of our metro boundaries - and beyond in Arkansas and on to America.”

Another photograph on the initiative’s Facebook page features someone dressed up as an Imperial Storm Trooper from the Star Wars movie series. The trooper’s idea? “More armor.”

But dozens of local residents had more concrete ideas for the region: A light rail system, more sidewalks, “thriving” public schools, “a vibrant and friendly” downtown, going smoke-free and a Macy’sdepartment store.

The initiative’s public outreach formally kicked off in September with introducing area residents to the concept at various community eventsaround the region. This month, agency officials held a series of meetings with stakeholders that included health-care providers, city engineers and planners, water-utility representatives, Faulkner County elected officials, members of the Central Arkansas Transit Authority board and trucking companies.

The agency also held a series of “community conversations” at churches and other meeting places in Little Rock, North Little Rock, Lonoke, Benton and Conway that were “targeted to groups that haven’t had a high participation rate in the past,” including blacks, Hispanics and people with disabilities, said Kelly Volin, an agency planner. In Little Rock, the events at St. Mark Baptist Church and St. Edward Catholic Church, for instance, targeted black and Hispanic residents, respectively.

The community conversations were organized as part of the $1.5 million sustainable community grant, Volin said. As such they included soliciting ideas about health, the environment and the economy in addition to transportationissues. Metroplan recruited volunteers from the community to introduce the initiative, she added.

“We invited someone from the community, someone that they’re familiar with and who gave them the assurance that what we’re doing is a good thing, and it allowed them to be more open with us,” Volin said.

Meanwhile, Imagine Central Arkansas has, in addition to a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a website, at imaginecentralarkansas.org. The website has an interactive tool called “Choose Your Future” in which users can input their priorities for the region, answer a series of questions and see how their answers affect their priorities.

Such technology can reach younger audiences and serve as an alternative to the public hearings that past initiatives have used to solicit public input, Cummings said. “People’s lives are busy and it’s hard to get them involved. With the technology ... we’re doing a good job with it and are reaching more people than we ever have before.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 12/24/2012

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