• Sep
    2018
    14
    2018 / Sep / 14

    Arvada Comprehensive Plan Development Update

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    Community planning firm Logan Simpson managed the comprehensive and transportation plan update for Arvada, Colorado. Arvada has changed and grown since its last comprehensive plan update, and is anticipating significant changes with the opening of a new commuter rail line with three local stations, a new regional parkway, large-scale new developments, and a renaissance in its Olde Town.

    Logan Simpson’s Colorado environmental planning specialists worked to leverage Arvada’s strengths through integrated land-use and transportation planning, focused effort on key corridors and catalyst sites, and a robust analysis of demographics, economic conditions, and fiscal impacts. The multipronged community engagement strategy aims to continually reach and unify this diverse first-tier suburb of Denver through an interactive MindMixer website, speakers on the big issues and opportunities facing the community, multimedia coverage of events, mailed newsletters to all residents, advisory board summits, and engagement of youth in the planning process. The overall policy reform focuses on sustainability, healthy eating, and active living. The plan was unanimously adopted by City Council in December 2014.
    The project included integrated land use and transportation planning for four new TOD stations, a regional parkway, a new creative district, policy reform focusing on sustainability, healthy eating, and active living, and plan elements for neighborhoods, housing, economic development, community character, historic preservation, parks and open space, environmental quality, utilities, and city services.

    Read it here. 

  • Sep
    2018
    14
    2018 / Sep / 14

    New Mexico Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan

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    Logan Simpson led the development of Viva New Mexico: A Statewide Plan for Outdoor Adventure, which will serve as New Mexico’s Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP) for 2016 – 2020. The SCORP provides strategies for strengthening New Mexico’s outdoor heritage.
    The SCORP evaluates supply and demand for outdoor recreation resources and facilities, identifies outdoor recreation trends and issues, and quantifies economic impacts of outdoor recreation. It documents benefits associated with existing outdoor recreation activities and lands, as well as potential benefits that could be realized with changes in programs, facilities, access to recreation, education, marketing efforts, and other actions. Benefits include tourism revenue, attracting high-quality employers, reduced crime, employee retention, reduced health care expenditures, increased property values, shifts in transportation from driving to bicycling and walking, and other factors that can be translated into real dollars. This analysis is critical to understanding the cost/benefits of investments and developing additional public support for funding capital, operations, maintenance and life-cycle replacements of facilities and infrastructure. Public involvement included public opinion surveys targeted to residents, out of state visitor, and other stakeholders, such as government agencies and recreation-oriented organizations.

  • Sep
    2018
    14
    2018 / Sep / 14

    Wellspring Park Conceptual Master Plan

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    The City of Goodyear has a strong commitment to its citizens’ health and welfare and intends to convert a two-mile, 120-acre strip of land adjacent to I-10 into a world-class health and wellness park. Wellspring Park is being developed through a private-public partnership (P3) made up of the City of Goodyear and the Wellness Park Conservancy, a 501(c)(3) organization.

    Bordered by three medical facilities and with few site constraints, the master plan for Wellspring Park grew organically, based on City, stakeholder, and the public input. Inspired by the emphasis on human health, Logan Simpson’s landscape architecture team developed three conceptual plan alternatives: “Mind and Body,” “Human Nature,” and “Nature/Nurture.” These alternatives drew inspiration from human life cycles, body systems, and the effect of nature on human health, leading to the final conceptual master plan: “Mind, Body, and Spirit.” The master plan approaches health holistically. It proposes a health-oriented conference center and commercial spaces as sustainable revenue generators. The outdoor opportunities are geared toward fitness, adventure, gathering, physical recuperation, meditation, remembrance, environmental education, and healthy habits, all while immersed in an enriched landscape setting. Because of the scope and scale of the project, and the anticipated build out over several years, the master plan divided the Park into “precincts,” each of which has a different wellness focus and aesthetic character suitable for individual development.

  • May
    2018
    10
    2018 / May / 10

    Handbooks, Manuals, and Field Guides

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    Logan Simpson has developed many manuals related to planning, design, construction, and maintenance of public facilities. We have also developed a variety of other technical, procedural, and program guidance documents, such as best management practices, field guides, decision-support tools, and training curricula. Our in-house staff includes technical writers and editors, graphic designers, and document development specialists who work with our landscape architects and other professional staff to translate complex technical requirements into easy-to-understand text. Depending on our client’s direction, we have produced detailed “cookbook”-style manuals that prescribe specific actions; guidance manuals that mix narrative with instructive graphics and images; and even manuals that rely heavily on interactive graphics as the primary gateway to the information the manual contains.