Effingham residents and officials discussed ideas for future land use in the city with the help of large copies of the Future Land Use map. The suggestions made during the meeting will be brought up to the Steering Committee in future Comprehensive Plan meetings.
The meeting for Effingham’s 2050 Comprehensive Plan saw representation from the city, residents, the steering committee and Effingham Homes.
City Administrator Steve Miller led the meeting since City Planner Greg Koester was absent. He presented several posters which contained the Future Land Use map and zoomed-in sections of the map. Each map had different zoning areas, such as residential, commercial, retail, heavy industrial and light industrial. Within these areas, people can do different things with the land.
The Future Land Use map’s purpose is to help the Planning Commission if someone comes before them asking to subdivide a piece of property or develop a piece of property.
“Although we have zoning and we have nice maps in the descriptions, we want to look ahead, where we want to go with this property in the future,” said Miller. “Do we anticipate it being residential? Do we anticipate it being retail, industrial?”
After a brief introduction, Miller invited attendees to stand up and draw on the maps where they think different buildings should be built and where they live to see the different uses their property can have.
Miller explained how it’s ideal for the city to separate residential, commercial and industrial areas.
“We’re trying to separate the industrial from the commercial from the residential,” said Miller. “You typically like to do it in that type of order so that there’s some buffering along the way.”
Steering committee member Libby Moeller attended the meeting, and she believes there was lots of good dialogue throughout.
“I think that future land use undergirds every other topic that we’re talking about – so business, economic development, housing, of course, all of those other topics,” said Moeller. “Everything we talked about … touches on every other Focus Group topic but really still brings it all together.”
Along with good conversation, she also believes the city should stick with the zoning it has.
“I don’t see anything still outside the box that we are doing or should be doing at the moment,” said Moeller.
“I just want to keep pushing for people to come as we wrap up with [the] Comprehensive Plan because we’re wrapping up these Focus Groups, but now is the time to again push it back to the public to get the feedback. And it’s just so valuable that they participate and share with us their thoughts and their hopes,” she said.
The next meeting is scheduled for March 20 at 5:30 p.m. at city hall.