One of the projects in the Airdrie Economic Development Association's 10 Year Economic Development Strategy is the revitalization of Downtown Airdrie.  

This week, city residents will get the opportunity to see where that plan is at when a Downtown Plan Open House is held.  Project Manager Karl Mielke explains what's going on with the project.  

"In 2017 we had a Downtown Visioning project that gave us a qualitative vision of what residents want the downtown to be and now we're focusing on the built form for the future of about 50 acres along Main Street, between Elk Hill and Jensen Driver along the north and south ends, and Bowers Street and Nose Creek at the east and west ends.  We're in the process of creating a new area redevelopment plan to guide the future of the development in the downtown for the next 20 years."

Mielke says between February and April they've been holding public engagement events looking at things like, where buildings should be placed and where road connections should go.

On March 12th, groups gathered for a charette, a board game style activity that starts with a base map of the downtown to which you add tiles representing buildings, parks, recreation fields, plazas, roads, pathways, bus stops, public art and other features that make up a downtown.  At Tuesday night's open house, the five concept plans that were created at the charette will be presented, as well as some presentation boards that show the various trends the downtown planning group has seen related to transportation, open space, building heights and the general structure of the downtown plan moving forward.

Mielke says the downtown designs put together at the charette were very interesting but, even more, they showed a lot of consensus and trends in certain areas that will allow them to come up with a consolidated plan to represent the vision for the downtown area.  

He explains, "A lot of the participant groups have been showing new vehicle, transit and pedestrian connections, particularly moving east to west across Main Street.  There's a fairly common desire for us to celebrate Nose Creek and really integrate Nose Creek into downtown, possibly in relation to plaza and park space.  There seems to be a general desire for building heights and intensity somewhere around the two to six storey range, but we have to look into that further."

The Open House goes Tuesday, April 23rd at Airdrie City Hall.  A drop-in style format allows you to stop by anytime between 6:00 and 8:00 pm.

Mielke says this will be the final public engagement session for this portion of the Downtown Plan.  The group is happy to meet with people one on one to talk about the plan.  Over the summer the group will work with the consulting team and internal staff to flesh out policies that will help support the Downtown Plan and implementation strategy.

The Downtown Plan will be completed by the end of 2019.  It will then go to council to decide if they wish to adopt the plan in its current form or have it revised further.  

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