06-25-18 Regular Meeting of the La Porte Development Corporation Board

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GOAL 1.0: Adopt policies that encourage high quality development. To provide a more competitive environment to recruit new businesses, to increase tourism, to create a more attractive retail context and to expand the residential market in terms of variety and quality of housing types, the Consultant Team recommends the following package of steps to implement the place-based aspects of this new strategy: Strategy 1.1 - Develop a Comprehensive Master Plan for Greater Downtown that links key destinations and neighborhoods. A master plan is the business plan of a particular focus point within a community such as a downtown. City policy has been calling for a downtown master plan, understanding that the real potential of La Porte cannot be realized ad hoc. A downtown master plan must be seen not only as a planning tool that harnesses a vision to the opportunities at the street, block and building level; but also, the master plan becomes the policy framework going forward for a host of related issues such as infrastructure phasing, connecting key destinations, supporting catalytic projects and determining how best to invest the public-sector’s limited resources. In short, the master plan becomes the basis for creating and sustaining economic investment in the context of creating a great place for people to live, work, visit, shop and play in Greater Downtown La Porte. The basic steps of the kind of master plan that is needed to realize the vision of downtown’s renaissance includes the following: Creating a block, street, public space and building level scale plan that respects and builds upon the existing fabric of downtown; Creating a revised street network concept that balances pedestrian-scale development with good local access and regional mobility; Identified catalytic development projects in the context of the master plan framework, including a integrated mixed use strategy to link the Sylvan Beach Park Plan with the remainder of downtown; Undertake a fiscal impact analysis of the tax base impacts to determine the level of public revenue that would be realized over time; Develop a priority and phasing plan for infrastructure; and 20 Forward La Porte Economic Development Strategic Plan I 2009-2013