The city hosted a public hearing in the Wood County Public Library Wednesday to discuss future land use, in which residents were welcome to make comments.
A draft of the city’s future land use plan was put on their website in August and residents were encouraged to look at it and bring questions to the hearing.
The draft outlines how the city’s property values and economy are declining and what actions can be done to improve the situation. The plan focused on four different areas of the city: downtown, the southeast quadrant, the northeast quadrant and East Wooster Street.
Some of the solutions addressed in the plan were keeping family homes from “apartmentalizing,” or becoming apartments, creating better sidewalks and bike lanes and filling the city with more trees.
Residents could have either put their names on a list of those who wish to make comments or could have made comments without being on the list. Each person was given three minutes to make their comments.
An example of one of the comments discussed was the occupancy rate of residences, asked by resident Roger Mazzarella. Planning Director Heather Saylor replied by saying the city had a 10 percent vacancy rate.
The future land use steering committee was passing the project to the city’s planning division and Vice Chair of the Committee Judy Ennis said it is difficult to pass it along to someone else.
“We are like parents sending our children off to school for the first time,” she said.
She said the timeline for the changes to the city will be within five to 20 years. Ennis stressed that if the city does nothing about the decreasing property values, it will cost the community greatly.
“The cost of doing something is better than the cost of doing nothing,” she said.
One of the ways to improve the city’s condition is create green spaces such as parks and improve the city’s streets, said Jill Carr, a member of the steering committee and vice president of student affairs.
She also said the “welcome” on East Wooster Street needs to be improved to give visitors a better first impression of the city.
Mayor Richard Edwards and University President Mary Ellen Mazey endorsed the plan and said it could improve the city.
“I hope it is a plan that you can embrace and formally adopt,” Edwards said. “Bowling Green, Ohio has always been a place on the rise and the place to be.”
