HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — In 2018, the city of Huntsville put together it's first ever, "BIG Picture" master plan, incorporating ideas for expansion from the community.
Now, there's an update to this plan as it evolves to meet the growing number of people moving to the Rocket City.
At City Hall, Mayor Tommy Battle said it's important to address the needs of the community as they continue to expand the city, also known as the 'BIG Picture plan.'
“We want to make sure that everybody has a chance to weigh in on this, to be part of it. To be part of the big picture plan and as we move through this, we’ll have a big picture plan that applies to 2022, 2023 just as much as our previous big picture plan applied to 2018,” Battle said.
Dennis Madsen is the Manager of Urban and Long-Range Planning and he said they're constantly assessing this plan to see what is going well and what they should do differently.
“One of things I think we’ve done really well coming out of the com-plan…is update our land use approach. When you’re seeing more of these mixed-use districts coming out of the ground, that's directly a response to the way that we’re growing and making sure we’re growing in a sustainable and intelligent manner,” Madsen said.
But Madsen said COVID has slowed some of those projects down.
“We have been under some level of COVID restriction…that has really hurt some of our implementations, some of our abilities to get things done. What we would love to do is as we come out of COVID as we kind of emerge from that shell, sort of re-engage some of things like greenway construction, and sidewalk construction,” Madsen said.
Greenway construction is something the community has encouraged and Madsen said they try to look at this plan every five years.
“We’re actually working with a land trust and will probably be reaching out this fall to do another round of public engagement on the greenway master plan. In contrast, the sidewalk master plan, we actually do that annually as we get constant requests for sidewalk improvements and we will add those on an annual basis,” Madsen said.
Many of these projects address roads, infrastructure and housing.
“We’ve always said that we’re not interested in growing exponentially. We don’t want to just grow fast, we want to grow at a measured pace," Battle said.
As the BIG Picture plan continues to change, the city of Huntsville will be providing blog posts and social media content to update the public on their progress. They highly encourage residents to share their voice.