North Main Revitalization Initiative

Enhancing North Main - Energizing Sheridan!

North Main Initiative PowerPoint
Click here to learn about the North Main Revitalization Initiative

Background

Over the past ten years, Sheridan has undertaken multiple planning and community visioning processes that have helped identify what people in Sheridan want to see for the future of our community.

Time and time again, people in Sheridan have said that they want vibrant neighborhoods & business districts to promote job creation and commercial expansion. They’ve said that they want to promote residential and commercial development in the City as a way of keeping our downtown healthy and reducing needless sprawl and loss of agricultural lands. And they’ve said they want to promote the character of our community through maintenance of our historic buildings, expansion of bike baths, and restoration of Big & Little Goose Creeks within the City.

The North Main Revitalization Initiative

The North Main area of Sheridan presents a perfect opportunity for us to work together as a community to help realize these goals. Already, young families are moving back into the North Main area and businesses are increasingly looking at this part of town for investment. In 2010, the Wyoming Department of Transportation is planning to spend millions of dollars to repave and enhance North Main Street. Using the WYDOT process as a catalyst, and with a concerted community effort, we can revitalize North Main, create new housing, enhance existing neighborhoods, and create new job opportunities.

But the vision necessary for such an effort can’t come from an elected official or from a government office. For such a effort to succeed, it has to be formed and driven by the property owners, residents, and business owners of the North Main area.

The North Main Revitalization Initiative is a plan to engage residents and business owners in the North Main area in a neighborhood-scale effort to spur revitalization of the entire North Main district. The City of Sheridan will help organize this process and will provide financial and staffing resources to promote plans developed by residents and business owners in this area. But at the end of the day, the vision and success of this initiative must be driven by the people with the most at stake in this area – those that live, work, and own businesses in the north part of Sheridan.

This initiative is intended to serve as a model for future community engagement and project implementation in Sheridan. A model designed to develop community capacity and to support ongoing and future planning efforts such as the City-County comprehensive planning process.

The North Main Process

During the months of May, June, and July, the City of Sheridan will help citizens and business owners in the North Main area organize neighborhood-level meetings to discuss barriers to

revitalization and to begin to identify workable solutions that can help promote commercial and residential investment in the North Main area. These meetings may take the form of neighborhood block parties, after-hours business meetings, and community gatherings in Thorne-Rider Park. During the summer, the City will then convene a North Main Summit to bring together participants from the neighborhood-level meetings to divide into community task forces and begin to develop concrete plans to address barriers identified by residents and business owners in the North Main area. By September of this year, these task forces will deliver their set of recommendations to the City for resources and concrete actions that are needed to stimulate revitalization of the North Main area. The citizens that have been involved in development of these recommendations will then work hand-in-hand with the City to implement selected recommendations with the goal of spurring further revitalization of the North Main area.
While it will be up to the residents and business owners of this area to identify and develop concrete recommendations for action, examples of topics that could be addressed include: installation of benches, trees, and light posts along North Main Street; changes to zoning or building regulations to encourage mixed-used developments; restoration of Goose Creek and extension of the pathway system; recruitment of anchor businesses to encourage commercial investment in this area.

How You Can Get Involved

Many residents and organizations in Sheridan have already signed up to help with the North Main Revitalization Initiative. The Center for a Vital Community and the Sheridan Downtown Association are both co-sponsoring this effort with the City and already individuals in the North Main area have offered to volunteer to help make this effort a success.

If you would like to play a role in the North Main Revitalization Initiative by hosting a neighborhood gathering or a North Main business event, please call Mayor Kinskey’s office at 674-6483 or visit http://www.city-sheridan-wy.com/info/citygov.php and click on the North Main Revitalization logo. You can make a difference!

I believe that we will look back on this moment as a turning point in the future of North Main. We are blessed to live in a beautiful community with a vibrant downtown. Working together, we can make sure our community continues to be a place where our children and grandchildren will want to live, work, and raise families.

Mayor Dave Kinskey

North Main Whitepaper
Click here for a brief description of the North Main Revitalization Initiative and how to get involved.