Continued...

A resident-driven vision for the future of the Greater Spruce Street neighborhood has resulted from the inclusive planning process and the community’s honest and optimistic public input. That vision builds on the area’s rich history, respects and reinforces its eclectic present, and welcomes a robust future fueled by the unique local collection of natural wonder, historic architecture, global communities, regional position, and involved residents, particularly inspired youth.

The community’s diverse constituency of empowered citizens and stakeholders will work together to usher in a new era for the Greater Spruce Street neighborhood, an era geared towards seven goals:

• An Empowered Community. A strong base of organized stakeholders investing their time and resources in the neighborhood to instill a sense of permanence rather than transience, taking full advantage of a host of need-specific services intended to improve their life circumstances, and working in partnership to take ownership of the plan and its implementation
• Lifelong Learning. Allowing for people of all ages to explore a campus of diverse and creative learning experiences.
• Housing Opportunities. Finding a balance of capital investment, financial assistance, technical support, and policy guidelines that facilitate equitable development, rehabilitation, and adaptive reuse for a mixed income neighborhood affordable to a range of renters and homeowners.
• Restored Productivity. With economic development taking center stage in the neighborhood’s transformation, this goal is to put the neighborhood’s buildings and people back to work in viable sectors that fit the area’s infrastructure.
• Engaging Parks and Play Space. This goal strives for revamped, reprogrammed passive park space, new recreation places that honor and reactivate the neighborhood’s proud history, as well as creating an urban environment that is more lush and green.
• Balanced Streets. Provide for walkable, bikeable roadways that give priority to pedestrians and cyclists over drivers, improved transit stations and awareness of transit resources, transit routes that better link the neighborhood with local destinations, and strategies to manage congestion.
• Strengthened Identity and Heightened Awareness. Build the public perception and image and greater recognition of the neighborhood and its assets for the benefit of both visitors and community members.