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| Metropolitan Government of Nashville Mayor’s Office of Flood Recovery For Immediate Release Tuesday, October 5, 2010 |
| Media Contact: Gwen Hopkins-Glascock(615) 880-1507 office(615) 566-7525 mobile
gwen.hopkins@nashville.gov
www.nashvillerecovery.com
|
Metro Launches Long Term Flood Recovery Plan Effort
Public meetings will collect input from residents about city’s strategy for the future
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Residents of Davidson County have a unique opportunity to help shape the future of Metro Nashville after the devastating flood in May of this year.
Mayor Karl Dean’s Office of Flood Recovery has initiated the development of a Long Term Recovery Plan and the first round of public meetings to gather residents’ input will start later this week. Metro Nashville is already becoming a national model for flood recovery. The Long Term Community Recovery Plan process will help Metro Nashville define what needs to be done over the next five or ten years to ensure the community successfully recovers and emerges as a stronger city.
“This is an important opportunity for us as a city to translate the disastrous effects of the flood into transformative projects and programs that will make our neighborhoods, our economy, our environment, and the entire Metro Nashville community stronger in the years ahead,” Dean said. “I strongly urge everyone in Davidson County, whether you were affected by the May flood or not, to attend and participate in one of these meetings. You have a voice in Nashville’s future, and this is a chance to share your ideas.”
The Office of Flood Recovery will oversee the Plan’s development along with a team of consulting firms with extensive disaster recovery and community planning experience, most notably for 27 parrishes in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, and the City of Greensburg, Kansas, which was devastated by an F-5 tornado in May 2007.
That wealth of experience in developing recovery plans for other communities will be drawn upon to create Nashville’s own roadmap to flood recovery, beginning with a series of community events designed to solicit input from those who survived the May flood and everyone else with ideas to share.
From Thursday, Oct. 7, through Tuesday, Oct. 12, “Discovery Day Public Meetings” will be held in different parts of the county, and are open to everyone who lives or works in Metro Nashville. People of all ages, backgrounds, and interests are encouraged to attend, recognizing that Metro Nashville will need to continue to unite as a community to recover and emerge stronger than ever.
Opportunities to participate in the Long Term Community Recovery Plan process do not end there. On Oct. 23, Community Planning and Design Workshops (a.k.a. charrettes) will be held to assess the needs of flood impacted neighborhoods and develop workable solutions that will help to stabilize and strengthen these communities.
Finally, in November, there will be a communitywide recovery public meeting to prioritize the projects that are emerging from the planning process. These priorities will form the basis of the final plan and the projects that Metro Nashville – in coordination with other government, nongovernment, civic, business, and community partners – will implement in the years ahead.
The process at the public meetings is designed to be inviting, accessible, and comfortable, so participants can freely share their ideas. Participants will work individually or in small groups with facilitators.
According to the Office of Flood Recovery, the Long Term Recovery Plan will be similar to the East Nashville R/UDAT recovery plan developed a year after the April 1998 tornado.
Neighborhoods in East Nashville were particularly hard hit, and the R/UDAT plan for the long term recovery of East Nashville has been a valuable part of redefining and revitalizing the future of this community. The Long Term Recovery Plan currently underway can do similar things for Metro Nashville and Davidson County.
The recovery planning expert team is led by PEER Consultants P.C., a Maryland-based environmental and civil engineering firm involved in creating the plan for post-Katrina redevelopment in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward district. The team also includes BNIM, an architectural and planning design company in Kansas City, Missouri, which developed the “Greensburg Sustainable Comprehensive Plan” to rebuild Greensburg, Kansas, and Nashville-based EDGE, a planning and landscape architectural firm.
More information about the Long Term Recovery Plan and the complete meeting schedule is available at http://www.nashvillerecovery.com/ .
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