Fort Smith steering committee members meet consultants

The first meeting of the Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee was held Monday (April 29) and focused on several big picture ideas, but very little on how to bring jobs back to Fort Smith and transform the region's economy.

In addressing the group, Fort Smith Mayor Sandy Sanders said he was hoping to see a "blueprint" come from the group during the 18-month process.

"This is going to be a good update from the planning we did 10, 11 years ago. … Lots of things have changed in the last 10 years and lots of things will change in the next 10 years, so what we would like to see come out of this is a blueprint, really a vision, a goal of what we want our city to be, how we want it to look and how the citizens living here will (be impacted)," he said.

Leading the revision of the comprehensive plan is the firm Wallace, Roberts & Todd (WRT), which was awarded a contract totaling $339,976, according to Maggie Rice, a senior planner with the city.

John Fernsler, a principal with the firm, said one of his company's first projects was reversing the decline of Baltimore and he hoped to help the city of Fort Smith do the same.

"But we tend to gravitate to communities that set the bar extremely high, communities high for community character, quality of life, and for the creation of an environment that is fertile for innovation, whether it be for the arts, or technology or planning," he said.

Fernsler told the group that his firm was in Fort Smith for three purposes:
1. "Our first job is to listen to the community and what greatness looks like in Fort Smith;"
2. "This is not a master plan, but rather has to be a guide for this and future Board of Directors for incremental planning;" and
3. (This provides) a 20-year to-do list with a high degree of specificity."

The Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee, he said, was organized to update the original plan because "things change."

"This will take the pulse of the community," Fernsler said. "It gives people a sense of shared purpose and (will) hopefully change attitudes."

While discussing the opportunities present in Fort Smith, he gave a stern warning to the Steering Committee and city leaders.

"You have to be honest about growth. It's just not a sustainable trend," he said, explaining that adding more and more land to the city limits without incentivizing investment in older areas of the community would hurt the city in the long term.

Fernsler also told participants that the entire process of updating the city's comprehensive plan would take about 18 months, with meetings taking place about once per month.

Silvia Vargas, a senior associate and planner with WRT, said the comprehensive plan would include three phases.

The first phase would be the current phase, which is mobilizing participants. The second phase will be divided into two five month periods: a vision and community assessment period and a period of determining the dynamics of growth and change coupled with anticipating future scenarios. The third and final phase is the plan development, which will eventually be presented to the Board of Directors for adoption.

Vargas said during the process, two pictures will be developed and presented to the public.

"(One picture will be) where we want to go and (the other will be) where we will go if we don't do anything different," she said.

The consultant group, which also includes a team dedicated to determining the feasibility of planning Steering Committee goals, has not come to Fort Smith to dictate goals and objectives to the city, Vargas said.

"We're not here to tell you what the vision is, but to help you understand what your options are."

According to Fernsler, this plan could change the path Fort Smith is currently charting.

"If we do our jobs right, when this plan is adopted and in the next two decades, if we've done our job right with this plan, we will have a transformational impact on this community," Fernsler said.

After explaining what the goals were, Fernsler and Vargas went around the room and allowed participants to vocalize what they would like to see as an end result of the Steering Committee's work.

A lot was made of making Fort Smith a hub for the arts, bringing bike trails to more of the city and even street beautification, but it wasn't until more than 20 participants spoke that any mention was made of how to bring jobs back to the city.

"Restructuring how economic development is done in Fort Smith is a need," said committee member Michelle Stockman-Hood.

A few minutes later, when asked what the consultants thought of their first trip to Fort Smith, Fernsler admitted that the community initially appeared to be a "community in partial decline." But he emphasized during his presentation and the group discussion portion of the first Steering Committee meeting that this was the start of Fort Smith's turnaround.

"This is the planting the seed stage," he said. "This is fertile territory. (But the community must) envision what greatness looks like."

The next meeting of the Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee will take place tomorrow (April 30) from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Riverfront Pavilion, located at 100 N. B Street in downtown Fort Smith.

The "Community Open House" will be open to Fort Smith Residents and businesses, where the committee and consultants will receive their first bit of public input on the plan update.