The Waco City Council lit the fuse Tuesday for a year-long planning process to redevelop “Greater Downtown,” a process that Councilman Rick Allen predicted will be “monstrously fun.”

The council authorized a $300,000 agreement with Fregonese Associates, of Portland, Ore., to create a 40-year master plan for a pedestrian-friendly central city that is packed with homes and businesses. The Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce, Baylor University and local foundations are contributing $114,280 toward the study, while the city is paying $185,720.

Fregonese, headed by the former director of planning for the Portland region, will do an analysis of housing, transportation and economic activity in the area, and engage thousands of residents through public meetings and design workshops.

“We’re buying expertise,” City Manager Larry Groth said. “What we’re paying for is a great facilitator with a tremendous amount of experience and intelligence. . . . We have to marry the ideas of the community with specialists who know how to carry those ideas out.”

Groth said the boundaries of “Greater Downtown” are deliberately “fuzzy” because he doesn’t want to arbitrarily exclude inner-city neighborhoods that might be important to downtown development. But chamber and city officials say it’s roughly bounded by Quinn Campus on the east, North 18th Street on the west, La Salle Avenue on the south and Cameron Park on the north.

Chamber officials are setting a goal of 80,000 new residents within a 7-square-mile area by 2050, about half of what they project for the county’s growth. They want 65,000 jobs to be created in the area.

Urban Renewal II?

Councilwoman Alice Flores Rodriguez said she’s on board with that vision, as long as it doesn’t displace existing inner-city residents. She said she wants to avoid a repeat of 1960s Urban Renewal, in which several square miles of the inner city were condemned and cleared.

“This is not going to be Urban Renewal. A lot of folks are leery of that. When we started talking about this, they said, ‘Oh, here we go again.’ ”

But she said she is excited about the selection of a planner from Portland, which she visited last summer and admired.

“If we can do any bit of what Portland has going on there, we’re on the right track,” she said. “They have a lot of activities in the heart of downtown. They did a tremendous job.”

Carol Dugat, an East Waco resident and Tribune-Herald blogger, attended the meeting to find out more about the planning process. She said she plans to be involved and to get others involved to ensure that East Waco is redeveloped in a way that respects existing neighborhoods.

“I liked the statements about getting input from everybody,” she said. “Whatever goes down there needs to be something everyone can enjoy, so people in the neighborhood aren’t just looking in the window saying, ‘It looks like they’re having a good time.’ It can’t just be a playground for the rich and famous.”

Echoing Rodriguez, she said residents have to be assured that this isn’t another Urban Renewal program.

“There is a fear of that,” she said. “People say, ‘Look at what happened around Baylor.’ It’s very, very important that they’re getting input from people in the community. . . . You’ve got to recruit people. People have to be asked.”

Chris McGowan, urban planner for the chamber, said the future development should enhance existing East Waco neighborhoods.

“The most successful urban neighborhoods are comprised of mixed-income people,” he said. “We’re not trying to homogenize anything. East Waco is probably the greatest opportunity we have because there’s so much vacant land and it’s a relatively sparse population.”

McGowan said achieving the densities he’s talking about — about six times the current density of 15,000 residents per square mile in “Greater Downtown” — won’t require demolishing neighborhoods. He said the area has 15.5 million square feet of vacant land and parking lots. By his calculations, his goals would require 1.4 million square feet of residential space, 3 million square feet of office space and 3 million square feet of structured parking.

He said that goal can be accomplished mostly with four-story office buildings and townhomes.

“We’re not talking super urban density,” he said. “It’s roughly like the French Quarter of New Orleans.”

jbsmith@wacotrib.com

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