Existing Plans There have been many planning efforts over the last two decades that address the Downtown in some way. The documents from these planning efforts are acknowledged here. This section highlights the importance of each plan to the Independence Downtown Revitalization Planning Process. Our analysis included gathering critical information from the existing plans for collaboration of this plan.
Comprehensive Plan Update 2015 The comprehensive plan for a community is a blueprint for the city’s future growth. It presents a vision for the future along with long-range goals and objectives. Comprehensive plans ensure that future land use and growth is consistent with the vision the citizens of the city have on important issues. Comprehensive plans cover all major aspects of a city, including those important to a downtown revitalization plan: community character, downtown, land use and economic development. The comprehensive plan identified maintaining existing character and beautifying main street as two key issues and opportunities but did not provide policy or action. This plan will expand on those issues and provide specific goals and policies to enhance and revitalize downtown. The economic development chapter of the plan provides policy ideas for economic development strategies that are further explored in this plan and updated with new trends and market analysis that we are seeing. This section specifically mentions “encouraging development, retention, and expansion of locally owned businesses, encouraging infill and revitalization, and maintaining, developing downtown as the central community activity center and expanding the Independence economic base”. All of those policies are a great base for the City to continue efforts for the downtown.
7 | Downtown Independence
