Dana Wall, a project director with international boutique consulting firm Street Plans, giving a presentation on placemaking at a February council meeting. Last week, council members voted to approve a $30,000 investment in the placemaking initiative. (Photo by Sarah Genter)

NORWICH — The City of Norwich Common Council voted at the Tuesday, June 20 meeting to approve the allocation of $30,000 in community development funds to be used in the placemaking initiative.

The initiative is aiming to tie together the nine DRI projects currently underway in downtown Norwich, and expand upon them to other areas of the city. The overall goal is to make the City of Norwich a desirable destination for tourists and businesses.

City of Norwich Community Development Director Erik Scrivener said the city has already received funding from local foundations to assist in planning costs, but said they are also looking for the city's investment in the initiative.

"There’s a lot of interest, but they would like to see more about the city’s investment in this as well. So what we were looking at is the city contributing $30,000 from the community development fund to go toward the placemaking initiative along with additional foundation requests," he explained. "They really like the idea of this, looking down the road with the DRI funds. What’s next? How do we create a destination here? But they didn’t want it to have to be fully funded by the foundations, they would like the city to have some investment as well."

The $30,000 investment is coming from unallocated HUD funding in the city's Community Development funds. Scrivener said HUD has already approved the use of the money for the placemaking initiative.

Scrivener said the city is looking at approximately $120,000 to $150,000 to be contributed to this project in total. So far the Follett Foundation has contributed $10,000 and the Greater Norwich Foundation has contributed $30,000, and there are plans to apply for more funding in July.

Dana Wall, a project director with international boutique consulting firm Street Plans, presented the concept of placemaking to council members in February.

She described placemaking as "the process of creating quality places that people want to live, work, play, and learn in."

Placemaking would create smaller projects that tie together the larger DRI projects for an overall cohesive area, and would also give other businesses and organizations outside of the DRI area the chance to implement their own upgrades to storefronts and facilities.


Wall said placemaking through Street Plans would not only help to implement these smaller projects, it could also help with less physical improvements, such as finding ways to allow things to take place in public spaces more easily, or identifying opportunities for small businesses to apply for funding sources.


In terms of tangible projects for downtown Norwich, Wall said some examples could include wayfinding to help direct visitors through the city while also providing great opportunities for public art and seating, turning pieces of Broad Street into public spaces, and updating intersections with pedestrian safety measures.

Another benefit of placemaking initiatives is the opportunity for tactical urbanism, a process utilized by Street Plans to create and implement small, temporary projects to test out placemaking ideas before spending the resources needed to make permanent changes.

Scrivener said a great example of tactical urbanism possibilities is the city's DRI project on American Avenue.

"Test running it before we actually implement it and spending our money to do that is really going to be, I think, critical to have success down there," he said. "That’s an area we’re looking at, some kind of tactical urbanism or something along those lines to really lay out what that future can be on American Avenue."

Council members have been supportive of the initiative, and during Tuesday's meeting voted unanimously to approve the $30,000 in funding for the project.