The City of Weyburn hosted an open house today inviting community feedback on drafted concepts for downtown revitalization.
The city has partnered with Crosby Hanna & Associates, a Saskatchewan-based Landscape Architecture and Community Planning firm, to showcase the draft conceptual plans to revitalize Weyburn’s Downtown Core.
Director of Engineering for the city, Renee Cugnet, says the event went well, seeing a strong turnout and plenty of feedback.
“We had some really great questions and really great interest, and the whole point of hosting this public open house really was to try to invite the public in and show the plans but also get that good feedback and some good questions.”
The Weyburn Chamber of Commerce is another partner in the project. Executive Director of the Chamber, Monica Osborn, says they wanted a seat at the table because of the impact the project could have on local businesses.
“We found that we needed to be part of the conversation right from the start. The Chamber is wanting to be at the table with this to ensure that the proper information is out there and what our members are looking for when they come downtown.” She continues “we want to make sure that our business owners voices are being heard in a project like this.”
The open house was just one part of the community feedback. For the next two weeks, the city is asking residents to participate in a survey responding to the drafted concepts. The survey and the plans can be found on the City of Weyburn website.
Cugnet says the feedback is essential, as they want to ensure they don’t miss any integral points in the concept’s design or accessibility.
“I really encourage anyone who wasn't able to make it today to go onto our city website and take a look at the draft plans, take some time to go through, and provide some feedback on our survey, because that feedback is really important to us."
Osborn emphasizes that it will be taxpayer dollars that make the project possible, stressing it’s important that community members make their opinions known.
“With a project like this, going forward it will be taxpayers' dollars to revitalize the downtown. So we want to make sure that the community is putting their input into what they want their downtown to look like and making sure that they have pride themselves about what our downtown could potentially look like.”
The feedback will be used to make necessary changes to the design before they are finalized and made available to the public. Cugnet explains when they finally break ground in the project, it will be to improve underground infrastructure.
“The next step of the project would be to start planning the replacement of our underground infrastructure in our area of interest downtown. When we go to replace the infrastructure on top, including the asphalt and concrete, we'll be replacing it with our new conceptual streetscapes plans.”