By Jason Hibbets
The Citizens Planning Committee, helping to shape the vision for a 2.4 acre neighborhood park near Sierra Drive and Lineberry Drive in SouthWest Raleigh, meet on Tuesday, February 4, 2014 for the second time, after several weather delays and postponed meetings. The purpose of the meeting was to review and finalize the charter and begin the draft for the park vision statement.
On a rainy winter evening, a quorum of the Citizens Planning Committee was reached and proceeded with reaching consensus on the committee charter. The main concerns leading to updates to the charter were around diversity and citizen input. Both issues were discussed and addressed. The charter was accepted by the committee using our consensus process.
The next item on the agenda was to discuss park visit highlights. Numerous members shared their experiences from visiting other parks in the area. Park highlights included visits to Isabella Cannon, Lane Street Park, Davie Street Park, and others.
The committee spent the rest of the meeting on creative exercises to help create the first draft of the park vision statement and identifying outcome measures. While it was hard to get the creative juices flowing so late in the evening, the committee was able to divide and conquer to get a decent first draft.
The vision statement was largely based on the community values we identified at the previous meeting. Those community values include:
- Connectivity, gathering, social cohesion
- Fun
- Inclusive
- Ownership, pride, responsibility
- Environmental stewardship
- Well-being, multi-purpose, multi-functional
- Accessibility for all
We split into groups and created the first iteration of the vision statement. It needs a lot more work, but we feel that we’ve got a great start.
The last exercise was to create outcomes, ways to measure best practices. Again, the committee split into groups to start identifying ways to reflect stakeholder values, connect problem statements, measure meaningful criteria, and incorporate quantitative and qualitative criteria.
The group came up with some great ideas. While defining “fun” was difficult, we came up with outcomes such as the number of community gatherings, the percentage of activities, the number of natural plants, the diversity of activities, and other ways that we can measure the success after the park is built.
While the committee is still early in the overall process, we’re making great progress. The Citizens Planning Committee will meet for the third time in March 2014 and the second public workshop is slated for early April. Our next steps include to further develop park concepts and master plan options, leading us to refining those concepts and exploring park amenities.
Finally, these developments will allow the committee to draft the master plan and look to get master plan approval from the Parks & Greenway Board, and eventually, City Council. The entire process should take us through the fall of this year.
As always, if you have feedback along the way, please feel free to add your voice to the comments or contact me to help represent the communities views at this committee.