Louisville is a small town with a strong historic downtown that, like many suburban communities along Colorado’s Front Range, is growing rapidly. Along with being a popular commuter route to nearby Boulder, South Boulder Road features a broad range of uses including housing, shopping, and open space. The community initiated the small area plan to guide land use, infrastructure investment, and development design decisions in area in the next 20 years.

As a planner and urban designer with Cuningham Group, I played a significant part in the early phases of the project. I completed the initial mapping and analysis of the corridor, creating a comprehensive series of maps and photographs that explored the current environment. I also coordinated efforts with multiple sub-consultants that were working on the traffic engineering and way-finding elements of the plan. I assisted in planning and managed the logistics of both the public kick-off meeting and a place-making workshop. 

For the place-making workshop, I designed a completely new exercise to help the public discuss and decide on what types of development they would like to see at several key locations along the corridor. In this exercise, we provided large aerials of each area and asked teams to draw where they would like to see new infrastructure and land uses, and then choose from provided photographs what type of development they preferred. Afterward I received several comments from the participants that they really enjoyed the exercise!

I then analyzed this information to develop three land use alternatives for critical portions of the project area. I mapped these areas and generated graphs showing the break-down of acres of each land use. This information allowed elected officials to see, understand, and discuss land use alternatives in the project area.