FAQ
What is Vision Fairbanks?
Why do we need a plan for downtown?
Why are new zone types part of the Plan?
Why do streets matter to economic development? What about 2-way streets?
Is Vision Fairbanks a cookie cutter plan?
When does private investment come in?
Why downtown? What’s so special about downtown?
Do we have to follow the Plan?
What do Fairbanksans want for downtown?
What’s wrong with our pedestrian facilities and what does the plan propose?
What is Vision Fairbanks?
The Vision Fairbanks Downtown Plan is a community supported economic development plan to increase civic and commercial life in the historic heart of our community. The Plan coordinates public spending on roads and sidewalks to attract new, private investment to the downtown core to create a vibrant retail environment that embraces the history & character of Fairbanks and complements our lovely Chena River.
It is a 20-year plan commenced in 2007 as a public-private partnership between with City of Fairbanks, the Fairbanks North Star Borough, and the Downtown Association of Fairbanks. The City of Fairbanks calls it a “guide for future development in the Downtown with the goals of increasing private investment, employment, commerce, property tax base and vitality without the use of eminent domain”. The Fairbanks North Star Borough adopted Vision Fairbanks into its Regional Comprehensive Plan in 2008 and treats the Plan as the Borough’s “official vision for future downtown development,” though the plan itself did not and does not codify any element of its implementation strategy. Implementing the Plan – making concrete change downtown based on the Vision Plan– is an ongoing process.
Why do we need a plan for downtown?
We all know the economy is down. There are vacancies throughout Fairbanks, and the center of the universe for retail at the intersection of the Steese and Johansen retains considerable advantages in attracting new development: abundant cheap land, 2-way streets, and a pending public investment of at least $15 million in new roads.
Downtown can’t match that, but it can have a game plan to be competitive for investment. Right now, Plan implementation is concerned with setting the stage for private investment. Vision Fairbanks vividly describes through draft zone types the downtown we want to be and also calls for 2-way streets downtown. New zoning types and roadway improvements are considered catalysts to revitalizing economic development downtown.
Why are new zone types part of the Plan?
Zoning is a revitalization tool. Creating new zone types will encourage investment in the downtown core by assuring potential business owners that the ground level will be used for retail activities such as merchandise sales and restaurants.
The use of the ground level for retail activities is linked to successful business establishments and economically healthy, active downtowns. Additionally, the continuous use of ground floors for retail activities maintains or increases the value of property.
The effort to create new zone types is not the same thing as applying new zone types, re-zoning property. Re-zoning may come later as a natural outgrowth of economic development as a means to protect investment; also, re-zones using the new zone types could happen at the time of a new development downtown. As happens elsewhere in Fairbanks with other projects, the zone change could be a condition of a project moving forward.
Why do streets matter to economic development? What about 2-way streets?
Without the right infrastructure, a gold mine isn’t viable. Downtown needs the right infrastructure, too. Two-way traffic, wider sidewalks, and on-street parking ease commerce by increasing convenient parking, making pedestrians feel safer behind a buffer of parked cars on a wider sidewalk that retailers will be glad to have fronting their business! As a one-way street, Cushman is not pedestrian friendly. The narrow sidewalks, high speed traffic, and lack of on-street parking create a hostile pedestrian environment.
Restoring 2-way traffic circulation to Cushman and Barnette streets will rid the Borough of its only one-way streets, make businesses more visible and therefore more viable, improving the investment environment. Further, Cushman is the only street downtown that has the adjacent land area and redevelopment potential to accommodate a viable concentration of “destination” retail.
Restoring Cushman and Barnette streets to two-way circulation is a catalyst to economic development downtown. The Vison Fairbanks plan identifies this restoration – particularly as it pertains to Cushman Street – as a high priority project to attract private investment downtown. Public investment in infrastructure can leverage significant private investment and has the potential to spark widespread and sustained reinvestment in downtown. In order for Cushman and Barnette to restore to two-way traffic, the planned Terminal Street intesresection just north of the Chena River needs to accommodate two-way traffic. Such an intersection can be a roundabout or a traditional ’signalized’ intersection.
A final thought: building on a blank slate of raw land, did all the box stores opt for one-way or 2-way streets?
Storefront Exposure: Many retail businesses seek frontage along streets with relatively high traffic volumes as a basic means of marketing and exposure. Repetitive exposure builds familiarity and develops an association with a particular street. One‐way streets only provide exposure to one direction of travel and, if the street is heavily traveled by commuters, may have an influence on the type of business that is attracted to the street (i.e. breakfast restaurants along morning commute routes and dinner restaurants along evening commute routes).1
Access to Businesses and Street Circulation: The location and availability of parking has a significant effect on driver perception of business accessibility. If there is available on‐street parking at the front door of the business, then the business is perceived as very accessible. If there is no on‐street parking and the driver has to find parking six blocks away, then the business is perceived as less accessible or inaccessible.
Street circulation also has an impact on driver perception of business accessibility. Sites that are served by several routes have an obvious advantage over those served by only one. The additional value of several routes (such as offered by a grid network of streets) is the ease of circulating around the site. When streets are discontinuous (an interrupted grid), circulation is adversely impacted. Sometimes, a one‐way street system or mixed system of one‐way and two-way streets can adversely impact circulation. This is particularly true when a one‐way street takes a driver away from desired parking, forcing additional travel than if the street were two‐way.2
1 excerpted from Kittelson & Associates, Cushman and Barnette Twwo-way Traffic Study, Preliminary Analysis Findings, pps. 3-4.
2 ibid.
Watch what others have to say
Is Vision Fairbanks a cookie cutter plan?
Sort of. All cities are comprised principally of streets and buildings. Whether in Fairfax or Fairbanks, streets and buildings can work together to combine investment and people for a better downtown. Vision Fairbanks recommends proven methods for improving buildings and streets that that have worked elsewhere in communities trying to attract investment and people downtown.
All cities have people, too. Here again, the Plan assumes that Fairbanksans need office space and like to eat and shop and be entertained and have a sense of community. The Plan therefore recommends proven methods for attracting investment that will in turn attract people downtown to live, work and play.
What makes the Plan a plan for Fairbanks, though, is that it is up to Fairbanksans to implement it, re-imagine and build our downtown. Also, the Plan is plainly inspired by the Chena River and downtown’s historic assets. Our climate plays a role in the Plan’s formulation, and looms large in the Plan’s early implementation documents, like recommendations for storefronts in the Design Guidelines and roadway engineering in the Street Standards.
When does private investment come in?
Vision Fairbanks is an economic development plan. Market forces and the private sector will drive revitalization — which is also to say the public sector has a unique role to play, especially in the early stages with those elements solely the domain of government. Like roads. Because roadway improvements cost money and because zoning is a legislative process, Vision Fairbanks is not yet market-driven revitalization. It is a political process at this point (May of 2010).
Page 11 of the Plan has an investment summary that depicts a total public outlay of $28 million to attract private investment of $148 million, a better than 5:1 ratio.
Why downtown? What’s so special about downtown?
A city’s Downtown plays a critical role in its ability to attract and retain the best and brightest of the next generation. Our downtown is our community’s showroom, and is what the next generation is looking at when deciding where to live and work. Ask yourself: What is the leading downtown north of the Alaska Range? Does it have attributes that a corporation would see as a plus for locating their headquarters? Does it have the attributes that a talented, prosperous work force finds desirable? Are your children or grandchildren that workforce?
Visitors expect there to be a downtown in a small city like Fairbanks. Those seeking the authentic and the unique seek out the ‘heart’ of the community. Their experience of downtown often forms the most durable impressions that they take home with them.
For us residents, downtown serves many roles. As host to quintessential Fairbanks events like the Yukon Quest, the Midnight Sun Festival, the Golden Days Parade, the North American Sled Dog Race, downtown is our “living room”. Like it or not, downtown is our historical and present-day identity (we hope more than the box stores). Are you proud of your downtown? Would it make you feel differently about your community if you had a better downtown?
Finally, downtown is a concentration of successful home-grown businesses. Buy local, right?
Watch what others have to say
Do we have to follow the Plan?
The Vision Fairbanks Plan contains desired future outcomes for downtown Fairbanks. The Plan does not predict the future: its approach is not to follow the Plan to prepare for what the planners predict. Instead, the Plan describes what a future downtown COULD look like if we follow the plan, on the premise that Fairbanks wants more from its downtown.
The Plan has an implementation strategy – so in that sense the Plan comes with instructions. But we don’t need to implement all if it exactly as the Plan says. Flexibility is intended both to means and ends. But we’d be wise to do our closest approximation of each step in the Plan’s implementation strategy. But not all at once! Consider that the Plan is a menu from your favorite restaurant. You want to eat everything on the menu. You wouldn’t fulfill your plan by ordering everything on the menu all at once. Instead, you’d do it over the course of months and years. Same with implementing the Plan . . . .
What do Fairbanksans want for downtown?
Fairbanksans want much the same things from their downtown as communities across the country. Over the course of public workshops, consultants Crandall Arambula distilled from respondents Fairbanks’ top five priorities for downtown. It’s not a visionary list. It’s pretty ordinary:
- more retail catering to locals;
- make it clean and safe;
- create parks and trails;
- improve parking access and supply;
- improve bike/pedestrian circulation.
What’s wrong with our pedestrian facilities and what does the plan propose?
Downtown Fairbanks lacks connectivity among bicycle and pedestrian amenities and downtown mobility is dominated by the automobile, principally as through-traffic. To be a successful “mixed-use” environ where Fairbanksans can live and work and play, downtown needs to be very accessible to pedestrians and other modes of travel.
The Plan encourages downtown-wide awareness of bettering pedestrian facilities. Among the specific projects proposed in the Plan, a pedestrian and bike loop would follow 8th Ave to Cowles to the existing Chena waterfront to Lacey Street, back to 8th featuring wider sidewalks, signage and traffic calming measures where appropriate. Additionally, a shared off-street multi-use trial is planned on the west side of Barnette connecting the existing Chena waterfront trails with those bike paths along Airport connecting to Fort Wainright to the east and Noel Wien Library to the west.
