City of Lake Wales issued the following announcement on Oct. 29
Dover, Kohl and Partners, the nationally renowned urban design firm, will continue to consult on the project they authored called “Lake Wales Connected”, a strategy for revitalization of Lake Wales’ historic downtown and one of its most important close-in neighborhoods. Together, the downtown and northwest neighborhood comprise the “Core of Lake Wales.”
City commissioners recently approved two agreements which will keep the firm in place as planning and design work on several projects has already begun, with actual shovels in the ground on some of them anticipated as early as 2021.
One calls for the firm to help in creating new historic downtown design standards, while the second covers additional general services that include assisting with implementation of plan recommendations, participation in community meetings, provide consultations/revisions to plan documents, produce/revise illustrations and respond to inquiries about implementation strategy and any other issues or concerns.
“We see this as a natural next step,” said Victor Dover, one of the firm’s founders. “You have to get the rules right if you want people to rehab buildings well and build new ones that fit in with the surroundings for a walkable, connected downtown. So it’s easy for the developer or the architect to open up those standards and know what they're going to have to do to comply.”
City Manager James Slaton said having Dover as an outside overseer will be a benefit in many ways.
“He (Victor) provides a lot of feedback and he’s a great facilitator,” Slaton noted.
Coming up with rules and regulations is an important first step, according to Deputy Mayor Robin Gibson, who also chairs the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA).
“One of the things we have to be unified on is to go by those standards,” Gibson said. “There’s going to be opportunities to cut corners, to do it less or to be cheaper than the quality that the standard is set by these provisions. We want to work with folks, but the important thing is not to sacrifice quality, because it pays dividends. This is moving in the right direction.”
“Lake Wales Connected” was recently cited by the Florida Redevelopment Association for outstanding "Planning Study for Small Cities."
“It’s a big deal. Most CRA’s in the state will look at it and say ‘yeah, we ought to do something like that.’ Kudos to the city,” added Mark J. Bennett, the city’s recently appointed Development Services Director.
The city is planning a virtual “Open House” on November 18 to preview a proposed redesign(s) of the downtown Market Plaza. The “Zoom” event will start at 5:30 p.m. This workshop is an opportunity for the public to provide feedback to the design team on their preliminary concepts for Market Plaza. It is anticipated that some portion of this work will be constructed as a part of the Park Avenue Streetscape.
Please register in advance for the open house by clicking on the following link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/.../reg.../WN_mv7CVkSOR1Gk10mb8lSYEw
Original source can be found here.
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