Visions sought for city’s future

Fort Smith asks residents to help

Monday, January 28, 2013

— Fort Smith is looking for 20 to 30 residents to help map out what the city will look like in the future.

City officials are beginning to recruit residents to work with a national consultant on updating the city’s comprehensive plan over the next 18 months.

“We are looking for people who are actively involved and will be willing to roll up their sleeves to make a difference in Fort Smith,” Wally Bailey, Fort Smith director of planning and development, said Friday.

A few volunteers have submitted applications to sit on a city task force, he said. The city also plans to contact various other people to serve on the committee, such as volunteers from the parks and planning commissions, the Central Business Improvement District, local corporations, medical centers, colleges and neighborhood associations.

Young residents should get involved in planning “the amenities and the aesthetics and services they expect in a mid-21st century hometown,” Mayor Sandy Sanders said in a news release.

City directors are expected to appoint task force members in mid-February, and the task force could begin work within the next month, Bailey said.

The directors recently hired a Miami-based planning consultant, Wallace Roberts Todd LLC, to guide the task force through the process of setting the agenda, defining the role of the task force, helping set up public meetings and gathering information for the plan. Bailey said the consultant also has some suggestions for Fort Smith improvements.

The consultant then will take the task force’s work and put it into a policy document that the city can use to guide its growth until 2020 or beyond.

Wallace Roberts Todd “is a large national firm that has done this for many, many communities,” Bailey said.

Fort Smith drew up its first comprehensive plan in 2002.

Bailey read from Principles and Practices of Urban Planning, saying that a comprehensive plan is a city’s official policy guide on decisions about the physical development of the community. It indicates how local government leaders want their community to develop.

Comprehensive plans are common among communities in Arkansas, said Jim von Tungein, planning consultant for the Arkansas Municipal League. Such plans generally address land use, transportation and community facilities, such as parks, fire stations and public buildings, he said.

Von Tungein said he believes that all cities in the state with populations of more than 50,000 have comprehensive plans, and he estimated that 80 percent of those with populations of between 20,000 and 50,000 also have such plans.

Even some towns smaller than 20,000 have plans because of the consequences from poor land-use planning, vonTungein said.

A city without a plan could see prime residential land squandered on some undesirable use or a potential commercial corridor remain underdeveloped.

“A city that has made a horrible land-use decision may have to live with it for 50 years,” he said.

And a comprehensive plan also can help a city withstand efforts to block municipal improvements, he said.

The owner of a building constructed in the path of a planned thoroughfare, for example, would have a hard time winning in a court battle to save the building from demolition, von Tungein said, if the city could show a judge that the road was envisioned before the building was put up.

Changes in the city over the past 10 years have made some portions of Fort Smith’s comprehensive plan outdated, Bailey said. Parts of it may need to be redirected, expanded or just re-examined.

For example, Whirlpool,once Fort Smith’s top employer, closed its plant in June, and Chaffee Crossing, surplus military land now under civilian redevelopment, has grown, he said. The job climate has changed, as has the geography of the city.

Also, many residents pointed out in a survey last year several shortcomings in how the city is run and how services are provided. He said the task force would be looking for input on ways to improve the community.

“It’s their time to help direct the future,” Bailey said.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/28/2013