A national organization, the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, has selected Wake Forest Mayor Vivian Jones to participate in this fall’s round of regional sessions about city design. In early November she will join seven other mayors at the Florida Center for Community Design and Research at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
“I’m really excited about this,” Jones said during Tuesday evening’s work session.
Since 1986, the Mayors’ Institute has helped transform communities through design by preparing mayors to be the chief urban designers of their cities. The group holds the three regional sessions three and four times a year.
Right now, Jones is working with the town’s planning department to begin preparing the presentation for her project, which will be to expand the concept of the South White Streetscape to the entire downtown Renaissance area.
“They want a project that is not far enough along so they can have input,” Jones said. “They do encourage you to have build projects,” not idea projects.
“They [a team from the institute] will be here in a couple of weeks to look at our town and look at our project and how to make it a better presentation.”
One of the ideas for the project, Jones said, is to have the Renaissance Centre and the plaza it is in directly connected to South White Street.
And, she added, the Renaissance Plan needs to be updated. (You can find that plan on the town’s website at http://www.wakeforestnc.gov/planning.aspx under the heading of Resources as you begin to scroll down.)
The other mayors invited to Tampa are Miles Atkins of Mooresville; Michel Claudet of Houma, Louisiana; Brian Moore of Petersburg, Virginia; Bridget Newton of Rockville, Maryland; Barrington Russell Sr. of Lauderdale Lakes, Florida; Chuck Travis of Cornelius; and Steve Williams of Huntington, West Virginia.
The Mayors’ Institute on City Design is a leadership initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the American Architectural Foundation and the United States Conference of Mayors with support from United Technologies.
You can learn more at http://www.micd.org/.
Most of the short work session Tuesday was taken up by a presentation about the development of the 10-year master plan for Wake Forest Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources by Art Thatcher of GreenPlay, the project manager for the effort.
Thatcher, GreenPlay founder Teresa Penbrooke and Parks and Recreation Director Ruben Wall were in the midst of an intense couple days. The kickoff meeting for the planning was by telephone last week; the GreenPlay folks were in town this week to meet with the staff and then attend the focus groups held during the day Wednesday and the public hearing Wednesday night.
Thatcher said they and their partners will use a variety of methods to find out what the Wake Forest community wants in the next 10 years. Those means include sending out 3,000 surveys to households, providing an open-link survey and telephone polling with multiple answers. If someone does not get asked for her/his opinion, they must be hiding. If you are not asked and want to participate, call the WFPRCR office and give your name and contact information.
The four commissioners present – Commissioner Zachary Donahue was out of town – informally agreed to set up a technology advisory board. Town residents can begin applying to serve on it this fall.
