Would you like one or two scoops with your Vision Plan?

It was a perfect summer evening to celebrate the official release of the Wedgwood Vision Plan. Neighbors gathered outdoors on the Wedgwood Presbyterian "south lot" for ice-cream, a copy of the Wedgwood Vision Plan hot off the press, and brief presentations.

Mary Beth O'Neill, a Wedgwood Vision Project steering committee member, kicked off the meeting and read a statement from Kurt Westman, the community council president. WVP chair Randy Barnett gave an overview of the process that led to the plan, and then consultant John Owen from MAKERS facilitated a Q&A session. Randy closed the meeting with a discussion of next steps, emphasizing that the plan is only a beginning and encouraging attendees to dig into projects they are passionate about.

Thanks to all who attended and offered their support and insights as we move into the implementation phase. See you at the Wedgwood Art Festival -- also at 80th & 35th -- this Saturday, July 17!

Wedgwood Vision Plan almost finished

Recipe for a Vision Plan...

Ingredients

• Input from scores of community members at community meetings.
• Over 800 responses to a community survey.
• Hundreds of volunteer hours.
• Professional consulting by an experienced urban design firm.

Directions

• Form steering committee advised by consultant to synthesize community input.
• Create vision plan draft and let rise.
• Knead, rework, and let rise again.
• Repeat step 3.
• Release final plan to the community and celebrate!

The Vision Project steering committee and Makers Architecture & Urban Design are in the process of editing a final draft of the Wedgwood Vision Plan. In the long delay since our last post, we have been following the recipe above with promising results.

Save the date: July 14, 7-8:30 p.m. outside at 35th Ave NE & NE 80th St. The public release and celebration of the Wedgwood Vision Plan! More details to come.

Results from first two public meetings now available

Hi all,

We have posted the results of our first two community meetings for the Wedgwood Vision Project on the community council web site. These are documents prepared by our project consultant, Makers architecture+urban design.

Several community members said they would like to review the feedback gathered from these meetings, which, together with the survey results, will feed into the Wedgwood Vision Plan to be shared at the final community meeting in July.

All the documents are PDF files. Here are two summary documents:

January 14 Mapping Exercise Results Summary
April 10 Overall Results Summary

Get the full list of all the available documents at http://www.wedgwoodcc.org/vision/.

For the steering committee,

- David Atcheson

Excellent meeting! 60 attend on Saturday a.m.

It was an experiment -- could the Vision Project draw in folks who hadn't yet participated by holding the meeting on a Saturday morning instead of a weekday evening?

Yes! More than half of the 60 or so attendees on Saturday raised their hands to indicate that they had not been to the first meeting in February.

Fortified by coffee and Grateful Bread bagels, participants got an orientation to where we are in the process and a preview of survey results. (Quick summary: this was the 2nd of 3 community meetings; the last will be in July at which the vision will be presented. The survey has over 700 respondents and will be open through April 17.)

Then, we broke into nine small groups and reviewed "alternative futures" in various categories (commercial development, transportation, residential areas), snipping out and editing statements and photos that resonated with the groups' thinking. Each group pasted items on a big sheet to create a "storyboard" of their draft vision to share with the entire group of participants, along with a brief vision statement.

Participants were constructive, creative, and enthusiastic and the groups clearly shared many common elements in their visions and storyboards.

Working together with the Vision Project steering committee, Makers architecture+urban planning will now pull together a cohesive document reflecting the input from the meetings and the survey, to be shared in July with the community at large.

We will post interim results of the meetings on this blog soon.

Thank you for your participation!

Project consultant selected!

We are pleased to announce that MAKERS architecture + urban design has been selected to help Wedgwood accomplish the Vision Project. Makers has many years of experience in consulting and planning neighborhood-based efforts, especially in land use and design with inhouse tools to facilitate a project like ours. John Owen (Partner-in-charge) and Dara O’Byrne (Planner, AICP) will be working directly with us on the project.

The selection process of a consulting firm was no easy task. We received proposals from a far greater number of very qualified candidates than initially expected. Final selection has been made just in time, as the newly-formed project steering committee will have their first meeting next week.