Lansing residents and visitors will have multiple opportunities to help shape the vision for the future of Lansing’s Main Street

The City of Lansing has partnered with Upper Explorerland Regional Planning Commission (UERPC) to create a community vision for the future of Main Street. The overall goal of the planning and visioning process is to identify needs, desires and concerns that residents, business owners and visitors have for the Main Street/Highway 9 corridor through Lansing. The end product will be a community-derived vision for the corridor that considers things like traffic safety, environmental impacts, historic preservation, lighting, streetscape amenities and more.

The Community of Lansing will be able to use the plan in pursuing individual projects and funding opportunities and in making decisions about infrastructure investments. Perhaps most importantly, the plan will be a tool for the community in communicating its vision and goals to the Iowa Department of Transportation when the time comes to reconstruct Main Street/Highway 9 through the town.

Community members will have multiple opportunities to provide feedback as part of this planning process, both in-person and online, and all those who live in or visit Lansing are invited to participate. An in-person community meeting will be held Tuesday, July 25 at 6 p.m. at the Driftless Area Education and Visitors Center in Lansing, and an online survey will be made available next week.

Another interactive and fun opportunity for community members to provide feedback will be through an interactive online/mobile mapping tool that allows users to identify and describe specific points on the map, and to provide feedback about the selected location - whether positive or negative. Users of the tool will also be able to include pictures that may even be featured in the final plan.

More information on those opportunities will be shared in next week’s newspaper, as well as on flyers around town. In the meantime, Upper Explorerland Regional Planning Commission Senior Transportation Planner Aaron J. Detter says Lansing area residents and visitors are invited and encouraged to start thinking about their hopes and ideas for the future of Main Street in Lansing.