One Chamblee Comprehensive Plan

Details:

  • City of Chamblee

  • Chamblee, Georgia

Highlights:

  • Incorporates other recent planning efforts completed by the City of Chamblee
  • Revised Character Area plan
  • Parcel-by-parcel land uses
  • Six small area plans
  • Sustainability plan

Description:

TSW led a consultant team to create the City of Chamblee’s recent comprehensive plan update. Chamblee has completed many recent planning efforts, including their Multi-modal Transportation Plan, various Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) plans, the Rail Trail Expansion studies, the Strategic Economic Development Plan, and the Automated Shuttle Feasibility Study and Design Plan. Chamblee has also seen a lot of new development in both its downtown area
and the Peachtree Boulevard corridor since its last comprehensive plan update in 2014.

The scope of this comprehensive plan update was to:

  • Determine what elements in the current plan is working, and what needs improvement;
  • Make specific recommendations for land use and future development, and create additional guidelines for infill development;
  • Develop a plan for economic development that builds off of the City’s Strategic Economic Development Plan;
  • Make recommendations for increasing walkability and bikeability; and
  • Develop a plan for increased sustainability.

The planning process involved an extensive public outreach effort with stakeholder interviews, an online and paper survey, four public meetings, two pop-up events to gather input and advertise upcoming meetings and regular meetings with a 35-person steering committee that included deep dives into plan recommendations and site visits to areas of inspiration in and around Chamblee.

The comprehensive plan update created a more defined vision for the City of Chamblee using the results of the TSW Team’s analyses, observations, and public input, and based on the recommendations of the aforementioned previous planning efforts. The City’s Character The area map was revamped to reduce the number of Character Areas from 20 to 13 to increase its effectiveness and prescribed new policies and implementation measures. A parcel-by parcel future land use map was produced to guide specific land-use changes over the two to three decades. Six small area plans that function as Urban Redevelopment Plans prescribed even more specific land use, development, and transportation recommendations to increase residential density, livability, walkability and bike-ability, and economic vitality. Lastly, the comprehensive plan lays the framework for a city-wide sustainability plan to be adopted in 2020. In order to implement the plan, TSW identified 208 unique projects totaling $141 million that could be completed through the year 2024, six groups of “actors” to serve the City as partners in implementation, and funding sources, both existing funding sources and supplemental sources from outside agencies. The plan also identifies 3 “priority projects” to be funded or started within the first year of the plan or are catalytic to implementing the rest of the City’s vision.