By: Deborah Johnson Wood
A visioning meeting hosted by the Uptown Forward Team last month brought the quest for establishing a Corridor Improvement District to boost economic growth in Uptown a big step closer to fruition.
Some 40 stakeholders from the four Uptown business districts (Eastown, East Hills, East Fulton, Wealthy) and adjacent neighborhoods moved the process forward with fresh ideas and a community vision of what an improved Uptown might look like.
“Right now improvements are difficult because everything is 100 percent volunteer driven,” says Kimberly Van Dyk, spokesperson for Neighborhood Ventures, a nonprofit economic development organization that has helped guide the process. “Uptown businesses want a structure in place to make sure it’s someone’s responsibility to make sure the improvements happen. Also, a CID will provide a small amount of revenue to be able to realize some of those improvements, and that revenue is sustainable, can grow, and can be leveraged for more money.”
The Uptown Forward Team, comprised of members from neighborhood associations and business associations within Uptown, already has a year of work under its belt.
Last July, stakeholders took a trolley and walking tour of Uptown’s business corridors and graded the streetscapes, walkability, dwellings, parking and other elements on report cards.
Using the report cards and results of an earlier survey of Uptown, meeting attendees assessed each business districts’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and came up with improvement ideas.
Those ideas include repairing Wealthy Street’s brick roads from Giddings past Lake Drive, providing incentives for property upgrades and incorporating sustainable green spaces into the corridors' streetscape.
The next step in the process is a public consensus building meeting on September 10 from 6:30 to 8:30 at 941 Wealthy St. SE. Uptown residents, business owners and other stakeholders are invited.
Source: Kimberly Van Dyk, Neighborhood Ventures
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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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