The City of Gluckstadt’s Comprehensive Plan is one step closer to completion after the city leaders had a meeting with their City Planner Chris Watson.
Mayor Walter Morrison said a discussion was held with the city planner team on May 31 to discuss what members of the board and planning and zoning commission had in terms of a vision for the city over the next many years, and everyone walked away feeling great about where the plan is headed.
“This is a 25 year deal — not what’s going to happen next year,” Morrison said.
Topics discussed include the development of city parks and multi-use trails that will allow people to ride bikes and walk around various parts of the city, as well as the development of a city center or a city square development that Morrison said would be somewhat quaint and allow people to walk from shops to restaurants. A discussion was also held about how the city can be developed over the next many years to try to alleviate some of the traffic problems that Gluckstadt already has and zone growth moving forward.
“This would allow for it to be not a hodgepodge of zoning but have a more sophisticated, reasonable approach to zoning,” Morrison said. “We’ve got some real challenges. Number one, much of the City of Gluckstadt has been developed already. There’s not a lot of free and open space, so how do you come in and impose what we would like to have in terms of development and zoning type restrictions when there are already buildings sitting there? So, that’s a real problem along with the city not having a lot of vacant land.”
With this discussion in mind, Watson and his team will come back to the city leaders in about a month with a proposed draft comprehensive plan.
“We’ll reconvene and look at it again,” Morrison said.
