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For the week of Feb. 2 through Feb. 8, 2000

Comprehensive plan revival

After a year of redrafting, Ketchum’s plan is ready for public scrutiny


By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

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"Will future development ‘fit’ the neighborhood? When will a public swimming pool and ‘pocket parks’ become a reality? Will the plan be able to contain growth within Ketchum’s community core? Will future traffic lanes promote traffic calming or chaos?"

A new comprehensive vision for a city’s future only comes around every 10 to 20 years, and Ketchum’s hit the streets on Monday.

Ketchum planners had spent the past year redrafting the city’s comprehensive plan.

After several heated public hearings last fall and winter on a proposed draft of a new plan, the Ketchum Planning and Zoning Commission decided to rewrite the entire document and use the 1983 comprehensive plan’s format as a model for the new draft.

According to Ketchum senior planner Tory Canfield, a comprehensive plan is both a blueprint for a city’s future and an action plan that shows how to accomplish goals and policies set forth by the draft.

Exact timelines are not set for comprehensive plan renewal, she said, but comprehensive plans generally look 20 years into the future.

That means Ketchum’s 1983 plan has almost outlived its usefulness. Additionally, Canfield said, most of the goals set forth in the 1983 plan have been accomplished.

The new draft looks into an array of issues facing the north valley mountain community. Everything from growth, history, housing and transportation—some of the valley’s biggest issues—to sidewalks, wildlife and avalanches are covered in the plan.

"Over the course of the past two decades, the city of Ketchum has transitioned from a small resort town, dependent upon the ski industry, into a multi-faced, economically diverse community with significant year-round activity," the plan’s introduction states.

"This plan will guide the growth of the next decade to insure that the very qualities that make Ketchum special are not degraded by ongoing development," it concludes.

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The draft plan is available to valley residents at the Ketchum planning department.

Additionally, a meeting at the Nexstage theater in Ketchum tomorrow will focus on public opinions of the plan.

The meeting will incorporate an open-house format, allowing valley residents to arrive anytime between 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.

"Will future development ‘fit’ the neighborhood? When will a public swimming pool and ‘pocket parks’ become a reality? Will the plan be able to contain growth within Ketchum’s community core? Will future traffic lanes promote traffic calming or chaos?" Those are some of the questions, posed in a city press release that the city wants to ask of Ketchum residents.

 

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