The Town of Okotoks will be hosting two open houses on the draft Downtown Urban Design Master Plan Tuesday, inviting residents to learn about the vision and provide feedback.

Town of Okotoks Senior Planner Colin Gainer says there's already been a couple of public consultations held. These included an initial open house hosted last spring, which also offered an online survey and online mapping tool, as well as a mid-summer follow-up survey and booth at Taste of Okotoks. The Town also held consultation sessions with students at Holy Trinity Academy and Foothills Composite High School to gather their thoughts and ideas for future downtown development.

Feedback gathered from those sessions helped form the draft plan, prepared by O2 Planning and Design, which was supported in principle by council in November.

Town of Okotoks Senior Planner Colin Gainer says community buy-in is key to the plan's success and that's why they're hoping residents will come out to provide their input. He says feedback from these upcoming sessions will be used to fine-tune the plan. It will be presented to council for final consideration in a couple of months.

"If there's really no support, or if it's seen that we're not engaging the community or really getting their feedback, it's just not going to have the ability to guide that downtown," Gainer explains. "It really needs to have a broad community support and address the thoughts and information that residents of the town can bring to it that may not have always been thought of and considered by just looking at it from purely a technical standpoint."

The Downtown Urban Design Master Plan contains eight big moves that could help guide redevelopment and future development downtown.  Those big moves are: Visions for a plaza and open spaces; a gateway feature to direct people to the downtown core; a green Main Street with trees and widened walkways; a redesign of the Veterans Way and Daggett Street area to accommodate larger outdoor events; mixed use buildings with environmentally-friendly features; sensitive infill to help preserve the character of existing heritage buildings; a mid-rise neighbourhood concept for the east end of Elma Street; as well as pedestrian-friendly plans for the riverfront area that preserve and protect the river valley.

The open house sessions are scheduled for Tuesday, February 20th. The first one takes place in council chambers at the Municipal Centre from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. with the second scheduled for the Pason Centennial Arena concourse from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

"Both these sessions will be a similar format to an open house," Gainer says, "with a number of display boards where interested individuals can come forward, hear about the plan, and then provide some opportunities for input."

Town staff as well as members of the consulting team will be on-hand to provide information and receive feedback from residents.

To see the draft plan or to read more on the public consultation that's taken place to date, click here.

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