Revitalizing downtown and business development throughout Ponoka was just the right fit for the audience.
Tim Schmidt, the Town of Ponoka’s director of planning and development, was the guest speaker at the Ponoka and District Chamber of Commerce monthly luncheon on Feb. 21, hosted at the Ponoka Royal Canadian Legion.
The message Schmidt wanted to bring to the local business community was the need for public and business input into the recently launched downtown revitalization steering committee charged with coming up with an action plan.
“We want your ideas. The committee is an open door and we want help in figuring out how to make downtown great,” Schmidt told the crowd.
“The plan is only as good as how much the community is involved. We don’t want to just have people see what it will look like, we want to listen first and see what people would like. It’s important to get that public and private collaboration.”
To that end, a campaign was launched called Experience My Downtown Ponoka and the hope is it will spur public involvement in the process.
Complete with posters and newspaper ads, it’s designed to elicit feedback via a website (www.downtownponoka.ca) as well as encourage participation through a pair of open houses at the Kinsmen Community Centre on March 8 and 9. Both days, the open house will run from 1 to 8 p.m. where people can simply drop in and provide an opinion on revitalizing downtown. There is also an online survey available by going to the town’s website (www.ponoka.ca). Online comments will be open until March 23.
Schmidt explained much of the ground work — like compiling a heritage resource inventory, going over development plans and assessments of infrastructure needs — were completed as long as a decade ago. However, most of those plans and ideas had little to nothing done in terms of implementation.
“(Planning and development) is all about facilitating growth and development in town and as a catalyst to get initiatives going on the right foot,” he stated.
“Last year, (the town) made downtown and highway corridors a long-term priority. There has been lots of planning done, but how do we get it implemented? That’s how the steering committee came to be, to build upon what’s been done and get a plan together on how it will all unfold.”
Unlike most development planning, this process will not take a long time as Schmidt explained the committee will be reviewing all of the submissions this month and drawing up a draft action plan for town council to look at by mid-April. Once the draft is approved, a second round of public consultation will be held in May with the final plan to be presented to council in July.
He said the process is relatively quick due to the impending municipal elections scheduled for October and the need for a plan to be endorsed by council in August, prior to the campaigning getting started. If the timeline falls into place as Schmidt outlined, construction work will begin in early 2018.