1.0 INTRODUCTION Community Involvement in the Planning Process
The planning process for the Indiana Community University District Master Plan involved an unprecedented number of community participants through a series of outreach efforts, including: • The Phase I: Discovery Workshop involved 160 community participants in a tour of the study area, a participatory workshop, and interviews of community stakeholders. The results of this workshop included a list of critical issues and ideas which the community expressed. These broad, far-reaching ideas for improvement became known as the “Big Ideas” for the District (outlined in Section 3 of this report). The workshop also included the P.E.T. Analysis described later in this report. • The Phase II: Community Workshop, held over 4 days in October of 2015, during which 250 community members offered input as to the how the Big Ideas could be applied to specific parts of the District. Stakeholder meetings were conducted to provide detailed discussions of the emerging Big Ideas, and included sessions with elected and appointed officials, local school children and urban planning students from IUP. Participants also helped develop a range of conceptual plans and sketches which offered alternative designs for improving and redeveloping critical areas in the District, such blocks between downtown and the IUP campus. • The Phase III: Recommendations Open House, which included 120 participants, offered an opportunity to review the draft results of the planning process, understand how the ideas presented worked with other community improvement initiatives, and establish a sense of priority and depth of community support for the Indiana Community University District Master Plan ideas. During the Open House, several Planning Team members conducted a roaming, mobile poll of people at the event, and comments were also collected on a large marker board on which community members offered input. • On-the-Street Interviews were conducted by planning staff interns from Indiana County, and received nearly 300 responses on several key questions about the study area, including “Describe the areas around campus in 20 years” and “The areas around campus should have, be or need………” The interviews were conducted in neighborhoods, downtown, on campus, at the Indiana Mall, and at an IUP football game, and included participants representing a full range of community members-students, long-term residents, faculty and staff, and downtown business owners. Community input shaped the definition of the issues facing the District and the ideas for making the District a better place, and established a sense of priority as to which of the ideas should be pursued as the most important.
On-the-Street Interview.
Indiana Community University District
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