The City’s Planning Commission will be holding a public hearing with City Council on Wednesday, October 16th to talk about the final revisions to the city’s Draft Comprehensive Plan. The meeting will be held at 6:00 p.m. and will be held in Council Chambers.
For over a year, American Structurepoint, a consulting firm, has been working with City Staff to create the plan which was designed to meet the following goals:
1. Build on the success of downtown’s redevelopment efforts.
2. Encourage continued residential development and promote a variety of housing options.
3. Preserve the City’s scale through intentional development.
4. Maintain existing and build new infrastructure that facilitates new development and increases the mobility of all neighborhoods.
5. Keep working with residents and businesses to enhance their properties.
6. Ensure that parks are “right-sized” and provide a mix of amenities.
7. Support job creation and business expansion.
8. Continue to support social networks that help citizens in need.
This publication has spent numerous hours writing on different aspects of the plan and the accompanying existing conditions report to help give our citizens an idea of what is being planned for the community over the next twenty years. We discussed where the consultants and city staff think our community needs to go, and the response to our work has been nothing but overwhelmingly positive. Residents have resoundingly said that Civic Capacity is the only outlet giving our residents any type of analysis on what this plan actually looks like and what it might mean for our community.
Going back to the original goals of the plan outlined above, one of the goals was to “build on the success of downtown’s redevelopment efforts.” In the comprehensive plan, the consultants helped define the spirit of downtown, in these words below:
For those that have lived in this town for any considerable amount of time, it’s easy to remember with nostalgia the Mumford and Sons tour that came through. But, I am not sure that it is completely fair to say that it was that event that was a catalyst for where we are today. One of the reasons Mumford and Sons came to Troy was no doubt the community spirit, the physical layout and the welcoming feel that Downtown Troy already provided. These words from the consultant make it sound like downtown was a decaying place before the event. If that is the case, that is not a fair statement to those small business owners and downtown stakeholders that worked hard, well before Mumford and Sons came to town. And frankly, if downtown was dead, Mumford and Sons would have gone somewhere else.
What Mumford and Sons did do was make the community more of a tourist destination. Many people throughout the Miami Valley and beyond that may not have given a second thought to Troy, quickly became enamored with the community and found this place worthy of investment, because, well, there were dollars to be made here.
But, regardless of what happened in the past, the plan is ultimately about the future. And as the consultants on the strategic plan looked at how to keep downtown economically viable moving forward, they combed through data and tried to determine what retail services are underrepresented in the community by finding out where residents spent their money outside the community. In other words, are there certain products or services where Trojans could spend their money in Troy, if they existed? Could these businesses help bolster downtown.
Well, in their analysis, the consultants found out that Troy needs the most space for……new restaurants, even though clothing stores and health and personal care stores also made the list.
I am not here to argue with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but it’s somewhat hard to believe that the one industry sector that Troy need more square footage is in the “Food Services and Drinking Places” category, but that isn’t the point. Private investment should make those determinations, not government bureaucrats.
The point is that the under the marching orders of this plan, the City is going to spend more time, effort and energy recruiting, attracting and developing more entertainment options in the community; the plan already spells those strategies out in different areas. In other words, if you aren’t keen on the tourist vibe in the town, just wait, more is coming.
Here are a few of the strategies the consultant is saying the city should consider undertaking:
Furthermore, the City is being encouraged to create more opportunities for the consumption of alcoholic beverages by looking into creating a “Community Entertainment District.”
These are just small points to consider when we look at the Comprehensive Plan, but they are important points, and they go back to the point that the consultant was making in their own definition of Downtown Troy. Downtown, and by extension, the community, is becoming more and more an entertainment destination, which is something that our community has never really been.
The jury is still out on whether slowly changing our economy based on manufacturing, which has been Troy’s bread and butter for over 120 years, to something based on tourism will lead to growth, but it will definitely lead to change.
And whether these changes are good for our community should be a source of at least one conversation at next week’s public hearing.
What Do You Think?
The question I really have for our readers is simple, if Troy is going to change its economic structure to be more based on entertainment and tourism, how do you think that will change our community? Our paid subscribers are welcome to leave their insights and ideas in the comment thread!
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That GOTR comment made me twitch a little bit, too. I think the cultural trend that was at the time already swelling a wave of historic downtowns making a comeback is the same cultural trend that drove the GOTR tours. But correlation isn't causation. I do think the city should play a role in incentivizing downtown preservation and adaptive redevelopment, but that has never really required trying to micromanage the business mix.