11/20/2007 Renaissance Project to Improve Chehalis

Renaissance Project to Improve Chehalis

The Chronicle, November 20, 2007
By Chronicle Staff

We commend leaders in the city of Chehalis for coming together in support of a comprehensive long-range plan for simultaneously dealing with growth and improving the city beyond just the downtown area.

Last week the City Council allocated $175,000 for a year-long study toward that end. It will include examining household demographics, employment, parking, land use, traffic accident statistics and an inventory of businesses and property in the Old Town and Twin City Town Center areas.

The goal of the plan evolving from the study will be to map out the city’s look in the future. The plan will take into account the growth and change that is occurring and anticipated and recommend how to tie all the elements together cohesively.

This is based on a community vision for the future. It’s a major step that improves transportation, economic development, how the community looks, how people flow through the community, said City Manager Merlin MacReynold.

Leading the project, appropriately dubbed the Chehalis Renaissance and in part inspired by the city’s new Vernetta Smith Timberland Library, is the city’s new economic development director, Joanne Schwartz. We felt we needed to get our arms around it and we needed a direction, she said of the growth and change that is occurring. We wanted it to come together in a single plan of action … in one master plan.

Chehalis Renaissance leaders point out that rather than focusing just on the downtown area, the plan will also coordinate residential and commercial growth in other areas of the city.

Such comprehensive planning appears overdue. The city’s last revitalization study and plan began in 1999 with a downtown focus. The study led to recommendations the city has since implemented, including improving city entrances, kiosks and signs listing community events, restoring the farmers market and the Facade Improvement Program.

With the new study pending, Chehalis Renaissance has already determined its first project - landscaping of the new library, expected to open in about a year.

This isn’t just a plan. It’s implementation. Were not putting money into a book that’s going to sit on a shelf, assured Councilman Terry Harris. The 1999 plan was a success and there’s no reason to think the Chehalis Renaissance won’t be either.

We congratulate Chehalis officials for taking the initiative and leadership on this and wish them success in meeting the exciting challenges they are taking on. Without planning, vision and cohesion, the city’s growth and look would be helter-skelter.