The document, crafted over the last year, lays out how the city’s five expansion areas might look and how planners hope to attract more housing developments to them. And planners are working against a deadline set by city council.
"We're kind of in the homestretch, so we've only got... almost two months exactly for this plan to be wrapped up," says Adrian Bryant with CivicLex.
Bryant says planners have been trying to avoid mistakes made during the last expansion in the 90s — which did result in development, but less focus on building community. This time, drafters are thinking more outside the box.
"The kind of philosophy that the consultant team and planning staff have been talking about is sort of treating these expansion areas as kind of their own, independent towns because the population they'll be bringing in could end up being almost the size of a Versailles or Frankfort, 10,000 in each area potentially," he explained.
With that in mind, each new area inside the urban service boundary could have a mixed-used commercial area, like a miniature "downtown" of sorts.
Residents can visit urbangrowthlex.com to see the draft plan and leave comments.
