City plan available for public review

By Sara StrongLuverne residents will be able to review the new Comprehensive Plan and offer feedback at an upcoming public meeting.So far, consultants and a core group of citizens have worked on the plan with city staff. There were initial public meetings that involved detailed input from numerous participants. Public input has waned since the development of Fledgling Field into a new Dingmann Funeral Home stopped being an issue. (Dingmann will instead relocate to the current Medical Center location in 2005 after the new hospital and clinic campus is done.)Although most aspects of the plan are set, the important next step is actually following it. The last one wasn’t referenced much by city staff or elected and appointed officials.The Comprehensive Plan is a document that provides a guide for city leaders to use in zoning and development issues. It also helps them recognize needs of growth and economic development in the present and future. The Comprehensive Plan has an approximate useful life of 10 years. Key points of the plan include:
Making Freeman Avenue more of a thoroughfare through Luverne to downtown and the City Park. This would involve connecting Koehn and Hatting to Freeman.Transportation is important for ease of flow for local people and those passing through or stopping in Luverne.Consultant Rusty Fifield said, "Traffic volume is the key, not speed."He said many residential streets are used for arterial access roads, which isn’t ideal. Fifield said the city will have to plan a few select streets to be easier to travel, thus eliminating the "unintended residential cut-through paths." The busiest street is Highway 75, or Kniss Avenue. Main Street gets almost as much, though.Fifield said, "You really have a lot of traffic moving through downtown."That’s a good thing for retail, but the downtown traffic should be funneled to a few key streets, he said.
Maintaining parks. Fifield said, "The nice thing about talking about parks in Luverne is there isn’t much to say. You have a really nice park system here."He said the idea of a bison park near the interstate to draw people to town is a good idea to follow through on.
Plan for growth on the north and south of town. The edges of Luverne are tailored for highway business, commercial and industrial growth in the current plan.Near the new hospital and clinic campus, the city wants to control growth so retail and other businesses don’t relocate to the north of town and vacate the rest of the town.After a period of public review, the city will decide whether to approve the final Comprehensive Plan document. "There’s more to using the document than simply adopting it," Fifield said. "We’re not coming with the granite tablets off the mountain. We recognize that you may want to amend it."