More than 50 people attended the Uptowne Olds Area Redevelopment Plan's draft plan strategy open house on Feb. 28.
Town of Olds and Uptowne Olds, in conjunction with Parkland Community Planning Services, held the open house to gather feedback and input from residents and business owners about the draft.
“We have a draft plan strategy so it is kind of guiding where the area redevelopment plan will go,” said Kristina Schmidt, Parkland Community Planning Services planner.
“We have some ideas of where we see the plan going and we would like the public's feedback, their input, seeing if there is anything that we have missed, if they like the ideas and what else they would like to see for their neighbourhood.”
Town of Olds and Uptowne Olds have been working on the redevelopment plan for the last three years.
“The Uptowne Olds Area Redevelopment Plan is about creating goals and a better future for the area itself,” said Schmidt.
“The redevelopment of the community includes residential, commercial, streetscaping, just beautification basically. The plan is basically a lot of great ideas to beautify and bring people to the Uptowne Olds area.”
Uptowne Olds chair Leon Durand was pleased with the turnout.
“I think tonight is going good. We are getting some good input,” he said.
“We will try to formulate a plan that will work well for everybody based on the input.”
Durand believes Olds residents should care about the redevelopment plan.
“If you don't do what you can to maintain and improve your Uptowne core, the area can then die,” he said.
“If the core dies, then what happens to the rest of the town?”
One of issues frequently mentioned by participants was the parking situation in Uptowne Olds.
“There are not enough parking spots downtown,” said Durand.
“What we need is more parking, and we would certainly like to have more pedestrian flow, and we will work on making Uptowne Olds more pedestrian-friendly, but not at the expense of the traffic that brings us our business.”
The next step for the draft plan is for Schmidt, Town of Olds, and Uptowne Olds to review the comments.
“We will meet together as a steering committee and we will start to draft the area redevelopment plan itself. From there, it will be presented back to the public for their input,” said Schmidt.
“It's still quite a way before the draft is adopted.”
