Public invited to help plan new downtown

January 4, 2008
By Robert C. Burns
Muskegon Chronicle

Interested members of the public are invited to participate in a planning discussion of the future of Muskegon's downtown and lakefront areas.

A "Community Input Charrette" will be Jan. 30 and 31 on the second floor of the Hilt Building, 425 W. Western. Hours are 9 a.m.-noon and 1-3 p.m. both days. A public presentation will be 7 p.m. Jan. 31.

Charrette is a French word meaning "cart." The city's planning department broadens that definition, describing it as "a creative, visual brainstorming exercise often used in the master planning process that helps garner public input and generate ideas and solutions for a community's future."

The planning sessions will be conducted by Williams & Works, the Grand Rapids planning and engineering firm hired by the city to complete a five-year update of its master plan.

The Michigan Municipal Planning Act of 2006 requires cities to update or at least review their master plans every five years. Muskegon's last update was done in 1997. The Imagine Muskegon! Community Design Workshop was completed in 2003 after considerable public discussion of how development of Muskegon's downtown should proceed.

Williams & Works has been analyzing those plans before proceeding to the public input phase of the master plan updating process. The process is expected to take nine to 12 months.

Planners are focusing on the downtown and nearby lakefront areas because that is where most of the city's new development will take place over the next several years. Among the initial areas of interest is the adequacy of parking in a downtown area that was the Muskegon Mall.

Public input is being strongly encouraged by the city's planning staff and Williams & Works. Ideas suggested by citizens can quickly be converted to drawings and other visual representations and their impact evaluated in future public gatherings.

The public will be given an opportunity to review a first draft of the plan and to offer further suggestions before the plan proceeds to the public hearing stage leading to adoption.