Residents interested in the Southwest Corridor Plan are invited to a community planning forum on Oct. 9 for a preliminary look at a narrowed list of projects being considered for the corridor area between Sherwood and Portland. Business owners and neighbors engaged in local land use and transportation planning processes will gather at the forum to provide feedback on the list and consider which projects should advance to construction most quickly and which should wait a bit longer. Community information and insight provided at the event will add to the work being done by technical experts in order to generate a community driven, technically sound corridor plan.
The list of projects will be used in conjunction with an interactive website that will go live in early November. The interactive website and survey will allow people to create shared investment packages based around themes like health or prosperity. To do this, individual projects will be prioritized and combined to support community-building by investing in sidewalks, bicycle paths, roadways, transit, parks and habitat improvements. For example, people may wish to emphasize investments on parks over pedestrian improvements, they may focus on one or two large projects or spread their investment across multiple smaller-scale improvements. A series of questions will follow the packaging activity to seek input on why certain investments are most valuable to each participant.
The narrowed list of projects was culled from a list of more than 500 project ideas for the corridor, which came from community input (160 ideas from 543 comments), planner recommendations to meet specific needs in the corridor, and approved city, county, regional and state plans.
The narrowing process focused on three key factors:
- Identifying projects that support the community's vision – input from previous public outreach tells us that Southwest Corridor communities are looking for "…a thriving place for employment centers, for commercial areas, for small businesses and local businesses and have (the corridor) accessible to people of all ages of all abilities."
- Providing transportation choices – making sure, "the transit alternative (is) flexible enough to meet changing conditions" and "a 10 year old and a 90 year old [can] walk to a store, buy orange juice, and get home safely."
- Minimizing costs and impacts – considering whether "resources (are) being spent wisely to get the most bang for the buck."
The Oct. 9 community planning forum will continue the discussion about what kind of communities we want to have and how transportation can facilitate community-building and improve quality of life.
Community Planning Forum details:
6-8 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012
Multnomah Arts Center, 7688 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland
Bus 44 Capitol Hwy/Mocks Crest at Southwest Capitol Highway and SW 33rd