Public Can Share Ideas On How To Develop White River

It’s time for the public to comment on the White River Vision Plan to enhance the 58 miles of the White River in Marion and Hamilton counties.

Community meetings start next week.   Brad Beaubien from the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development, says they’ll be more than open house formats.

“We’ll have a series of timed presentations where you can stop in and learn about where we are at in the process and then we’ll have a series of activities where you can start envisioning what you would like to see along the river,” Beaubien says.

Participants will help prioritize potential focus areas for further study, including destinations, recreational opportunities and accessibility opportunities. Programming, market research, and unique riverfront events and features all will be considered. New destinations and recreational assets will focus on areas with ecological, historical, cultural, significance and important neighborhood adjacencies.

Beaubien says they already collected public feedback.

“We’ve heard that there are places where people want to leave alone that we want to restore and store their ecological function and kind of preserve them as wild places," Beaubien says. "We’ve also heard there are places where it’s appropriate to have more activity along them.”

The 12-month planning period is scheduled for completion in April 2019.  The final plan will then be shared with the public and a variety of stakeholder groups and organizations

Community members also can provide thoughts and ideas directly using a survey posted on mywhiteriver.com.

There will be three meetings held in Hamilton County and Indianapolis;

• Tuesday, Oct. 23                                         
  Founders Park/Wilfong Pavilion
  11675 Hazel Dell Pkwy, Carmel
  6 - 8 p.m.
   
• Wednesday, October 24     
  Rhodius Park
  1720 W. Wilkins St., Indianapolis
  12 - 1:30 p.m.                          
   
• Wednesday, October 24 
  ROWPort: Edison School of the Arts
  777 S. White River Parkway, Indianapolis
  6 - 7:30 p.m.