Great downtowns fill cities with life.  You can tell a city is healthy if it has a vital downtown full of public activity.  Springfield is developing a Downtown Revitalization Strategy to spark and guide the new vitality that is emerging in our downtown.  Springfield voters approved a Downtown Urban Renewal District in November 2007.  Springfield citizens are looking forward to building on our recent achievements – LTD Downtown Station, Emerald Art Center, the Wildish Theatre, the A3 Arts Academy and the Royal Building – and to experiencing an enhanced Downtown that we can all take pride in.

The Community Planning & Revitalization Division is facilitating a community visioning process to develop plans and policies which will promote and sustain vibrant retail blocks, inviting pedestrian-friendly streets, downtown housing, an enhanced civic center and public spaces, cultural destinations, and connections to Island Park and the adjacent Glenwood, Washburne and Booth Kelly neighborhoods.  City staff, the Downtown Citizen Advisory Committee and our consultant team are developing an exciting new plan for downtown and an Implementation Strategy to prioritize investments and actions to support the vision.  Our placemaking approach will enable city staff and residents to focus on improving the places that are most important to them and build a planning framework around key actions.  Our process seeks to rejuvenate our downtown and catalyze improvements by both the public sector and private sector partners.

Working with stakeholders, businesses, residents, cultural institutions, city staff, the Planning Commission and our elected officials (and within the context of planning that has already been completed), the visioning process will seek to identify the key places—buildings, plazas, commercial corridors, parks, and more--that can become the magnets of our downtown.  These are the places that will draw people and businesses, leading to the transformation of the surrounding districts.  Imagine, for instance, a new public plaza at the entry into downtown that links Island Park and the Willamette Riverfront with our Main Street and downtown core, creating a locus for new retail, offices and residential development with river views.  The products of our work will be a Downtown District plan and new regulatory policies and design standards to guide downtown redevelopment activity.  The Downtown Revitalization project will provide a firm foundation and a strategy which targets immediate and long range implementation actions which encourage vitality to emerge.