Prineville City Council tasked with taking the first steps to approve the city’s first-ever urban renewal agency
PRINEVILLE, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Creating Prineville's first urban renewal agency entails a comprehensive plan, which was unveiled during Tuesday's City Council meeting, and was aimed at revitalizing the city’s aging downtown district.
If approved, the Prineville Urban Renewal Agency’s focus will be to rejuvenate Prineville, attract new businesses, and improve the quality of life for residents.
The city expects to adopt the final plan and ordinance in October of this year.
Planning Director Josh Smith said, “The council will be the agency, and that agency then controls that funding to perform those projects and hopefully renew or revitalize the district - in this case, our downtown.”
The city has created seven specific benchmarks that the proposed urban renewal agency hopes to accomplish:
- maintain public involvement
- encourage economic growth.
- encourage a unique district identity
- make downtown a destination
- enhance multi-modal transportation
- integrate the parks system
- involve itself in historic preservation.
“The primary purpose for the city is streetscape. We’re talking sidewalks, lights, the things you normally see in downtown Bend, Redmond, Madras, all the other Central Oregon cities, to really enhance that streetscape, that public environment – that interaction between the public and the private,” Smith said.
If all goes well in establishing Prineville’s Urban Renewal Agency, the city says their first piece of business is to revitalize this section of the city, Fourth and Main.
