FAYETTEVILLE -- Sonia Davis Gutierrez pored over a 3-foot map of Washington County, its city and state parks splashed across the paper in patches of green. After a moment's search, she found her target: Fayetteville's Mount Sequoyah Woods, a 67-acre stretch of forest near the town's heart.
"I just go from park to park when I'm not at my desk," she said, affixing a bright orange sticker to the spot. "I live downtown, so it's a nice way to say, 'Ah, I feel like I'm outdoors.'"
At A Glance
Open Up for Open Space
Here’s how you can participate in an open space study being conducted by the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission:
• Public Workshop: Wednesday at the Bentonville Public Library from 4 to 7 p.m. with the goal of introducing the project and hearing from the public about what they value most in terms of open space.
• Project Website: Learn more about the project background, benefits of open space, and why this plan is important. Find links to the comment form, input map, and other project resources. Visit the site throughout 2015 for project updates. http://www.nwaopens…
• Online Input Map: What are your favorite open spaces in Northwest Arkansas? Use this map to drop points describing your favorite places and see what others have listed: http://wikimapping.…
• Online Comment Form: Tell regional planners what you value most in terms of open space. Direct link: https://www.surveym…
For more information contact: Elizabeth Bowen, Project Manager, NWA Regional Planning Commission, 1311 Clayton St., Springdale, Ark., 72762; Office: 479-751-7125; Fax: 479-751-7150; [email protected]
Source: Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission
That kind of input is exactly what an area coalition of planners, conservationists and other stakeholders are looking for during their year-long study on how to preserve the region's parks, trails and forests. The project began Tuesday afternoon in Fayetteville's Public Library, where Gutierrez and at least 50 others gave their two cents on which spaces are worth keeping as the area grows in the next few decades.
A second public session is planned today from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Bentonville Public Library.
Parks and natural areas dot Northwest Arkansas from corner to corner, ranging from Fayetteville's 0.2-acre St. Joseph Park to Benton County's 12,000-acre Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area.
Such spaces are the region's environmental backbone, sustaining and improving people's lives, water quality and the area's economy, according to the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission, one of several groups involved in the project. The challenge is to make a master plan for steering the area's development as its half-million population swells to 750,000 and above.
"You might be able to imagine how it'll continue," Jason Reyes, an associate with Alta Planning and Design, said Tuesday as he pointed to a map of the two counties' expanding network of streets and highways that reach nearly every open space. Alta helped design the Razorback Greenway, a trail near completion that will link Fayetteville to Bella Vista. "It's good to plan for the future."
To that end, the regional planning commission asked residents to tell them which open spaces they value most, especially those spaces that aren't set aside as parks.
"This is just kind of my thing," Garnett Wise, a sustainability manager with Waste Management, said as he highlighted half a dozen spots in Washington County with stickers Tuesday, including his favorite, Lake Fayetteville's bike trail. "We don't want to take them for granted."
The commission hopes cities and counties will refer to its final plan as they decide where and how to develop, said Elizabeth Bowen, the project's manager with the planning commission.
"We all live together, work together," Bowen said. "There's hardly even any space between us anymore. We need to look at what we have ... and how do we keep it that way."
Juliet Richey, Washington County planner, said the finished project's inventory of the region's natural priorities will be "an incredible tool" for her work reviewing construction and development proposals.
"This is something we've been trying to do for a while, but we don't have the manpower," she said Tuesday. "To me, those (priorities) are really strong pieces of understanding a place and what a place wants to be."
NW News on 01/21/2015