Sara Stadem | Editor
With the help of ISG, The Downtown Hartford Inc. (DHI) and the City of Hartford turned to community members on Wednesday, October 20, at a Community Development Plan Open House to see what they wanted to see for the future of Hartford.
According to Chamber & Economic Development Director Amy Farr, this has been months of preparation of meetings with focus groups, the city had a team and DHI, to lead up to the open house. After several individual group meetings, Farr explained the groups had one meeting together to see how they wanted things to look so they would mirror each other.
From there, the city and DHI wanted to bring the information to the community to get their feedback and to see what community members wanted to see for Hartford.
When community members arrived, they were given three Hartford bucks, according to Farr. From there, they could put the money into the baskets that were the most important to them. Some of the baskets that were provided were areas such as parks and rec, light industrial, heavy industrial, housing and more.
The open house presented with pictures different ideas to the community that they have been hearing patrons were wanting to see, according to Farr, such as splash parks, a new community center with an indoor pool, a new city hall and a new public works building. Other ideas were some dining with a restaurant feel to it, burgers and ice cream such as a Dairy Queen or B&G Milky Way and senior living. “When people are moving out of their home when they get older, they are having to move to Sioux Falls,” Farr said. “We would like to help keep them in their community that they know and love.”
Community members were asked to take a green, orange and yellow dot and prioritize on the pictures what they would like to see in the Hartford community, Farr explained. The green was most important, with orange being second and yellow was for third.
ISG, the engineer who the city has contracted with, was in attendance throughout the open house as well as members from the groups that started the process five months ago, according to Farr. They were available to answer questions or help walk through scenarios for community members. “I think ISG did a fabulous job being available. They had great visuals and would walk you through the process,” Farr said.
Another benefit to the open house, according to Farr, was they were able to provide an update on the Envision 2025 board which includes the three pillars of Quality of Life, Light Industrial and Commercial and Workforce Development.
According to Farr, there were about 50-60 people in attendance at the open house. “We had the support of the senior citizens as well. They came on a bus so it was good to have their input,” Farr said. “It would have been nice to have some younger people and families there that might frequent the indoor pools, etc., but it was held on a Wednesday night so I can see why maybe that didn’t happen.”
The next step is for ISG to take the information that was gathered from the open house and break it down. Anything that did not receive any dots are removed and they take what had the three colored dots and it will be presented to the groups again.
“I think it went really well overall,” Farr said. “It’s always a success whether you have one or 40 people there to bring the community together to help decide the future of Hartford’s growth, that’s important and they showed up that night.”