Community Poll Establishes Clear Consensus & Vision for “People Places” in Downtown
Crystal Lake is already a great downtown – it’s quaint, charming, Metra-accessible and filled with a bounty of beloved local businesses, shops, eateries and creative destinations like the Raue Center for the Arts. A key finding of recent planning efforts, including a Comprehensive and Downtown Plan, was the community’s desire for more people places in downtown. To understand the nuances of potential opportunity sites, Teska collaborated with staff to develop an image-based community feedback poll. Over 830+ community members participated, sharing 1,700 original comments. The team was happy to see input was shared by community members of all ages and evenly dispersed between brackets; an important aspect when designing public places. This extensive local input was thoroughly reviewed and the findings applied to developed concept plans for four (4) opportunity sites.
Concept Plans Developed & Presented
Teska landscape architects presented the placemaking concepts via a public presentation to Council. Plans ranged from ‘low hanging fruit’, i.e. modest seating and landscape enhancements to existing plazas… to larger scale visionary projects that included a Festival Street and community event space at Depot Park.
“It’s heartwarming to see community support [for downtown events],” Cowlin said. “It gets us that push to continue moving forward. Teska knocked it out of the park. Their designs are fabulous.” - Katie Cowlin, Community Development Director, City of Crystal Lake | Northwest Herald Article
“I’m a big believer in art downtown. “We want that ‘wow’ factor when someone steps off the train here. To identify for anyone coming in that they are in Crystal Lake.” - Mayor Haig Haleblian expressed interest in an attraction based on Crystal Lake’s history as an ice harvesting town | Northwest Herald Article
Next Steps: Final Plans & Engineering Ahead
Plans both big and small were steeped in the vision and consensus shared by the community and all were well received by Council. As such, Teska is ecstatic to report that staff was given the green light to proceed with next steps to develop these public places, which will focus on final design and engineering studies. A detailed cost breakdown will be an integral element of these studies and tool through which the City may obtain grants and build the projects into capital planning for future, and likely phased, implementation. Cheers to next steps, happy people places and community-driven planning!
For additional information please visit:
https://www.crystallake.org/your-government/departments/community-development/downtown-enhancement