Focus on Downtown redevelopment
- Enhanced Neighborhood Revitalization Program
- Promote upper floor residential projects
- Recommend redevelopment of specific parking lots
- Improve downtown pedestrian/bicycle corridors and provide better connections to downtown
- Create improved aesthetics(both private and public spaces)
- Find ways to transition blighted structures to development ready sites
- Work with downtown restaurants to create opportunities for improved nightlife and outdoor seating
- Formalize a task force to consider the future of the Commercial Street pedestrian mall
- Intensify efforts to develop a downtown movie theatre
- Continued support of the downtown facade loan program
Build on the culture of entrepreneurship
- Direct entrepreneurs connect with the Northeast Kansas Enterprise Facilitation Program
- Enhanced Neighborhood Revitalization Program
- Promote the NetWork Kansas E-community program
- Preserve City funding for an Innovation Center or Fab Lab project
- Work with businesses & civic organizations to create internship opportunities for Benedictine students
Improve housing and neighborhoods
- Enhanced Neighborhood Revitalization Program
- Consider strategic modifications to existing property maintenance codes
- Consider adoption of the Existing Building Code to allow for more practical preservation of older buildings
- Develop ways to encourage more downtown loft projects
- Explore affordable housing proposals, especially in historic buildings
- Pursue opportunities to improve “curb appeal”including sidewalks, alleys, curbs, and street trees
- Partner with local housing developers to identify partnership opportunities with the Kansas Housing Resource Corporation, specifically the Moderate Income Housing Program
- Market properties held by the City’s land bank for redevelopment opportunities
- Remove code/regulatory barriers to infill housing redevelopment
Work to recruit employers
- Respond to Requests for Proposals (RFP) for both the Kansas City Area Development Council and the Kansas Department of Commerce
- Market the Shannon Industrial Park