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Planning Sessions Kick Off February 16: Here’s your guide for participating

We hope you’ve already saved the dates for our four days of collaboration on Las Cruces’s new Downtown Master Plan. The time, place and topics for all the meetings are here.

(Note: We’ve made some updates and clarifications since the schedule was originally posted last week. So make sure you’re working off this latest version.)

Over the course of the four days, there are six opportunities to catch up on the latest information, join in the discussion, and offer critique of work in progress. While we’d love to have you at every meeting, we know your schedules are unlikely to allow for that. To help you with your choices for participating, here’s a quick guide:

The opening and closing sessions on Tuesday and Friday evenings are where you’ll be able to comment on and contribute to our big picture goals and, in the case of the concluding meeting on Friday evening, our recommended strategies to achieve them.

There are special presentations, one on Wednesday and another on Thursday, likely to draw big crowds to City Hall City Council Chambers. The Wednesday event is a two-part segment with national retail consultant Bob Gibbs, who leads off from 10 to 11 a.m. with a talk about the theory and tools of successful urban retail. Then, from 11 till noon, he’ll focus on the latest research about Las Cruces’s Downtown and help lead a discussion about opportunities to accelerate Downtown’s success.

The visiting expert on Thursday is transportation engineer and walkability guru Peter Swift. From 1:30 till 2:30, he’ll talk about ways walkability strategies can be applied to neighborhoods citywide. Then, from 2:30 till 3:30, he’ll talk briefly about specific approaches for improving Downtown and then take part in a more wide-ranging transportation discussion.


Printable and Shareable Flyers

Main Street Retail | Bob Gibbs (.pdf 1mb) | Walkability and Connectivity | Peter Swift (.pdf 1mb)


On Wednesday at 1:30 at the Branigan Cultural Center, we’ll be focusing on topics neighborhood residents, businesses and cultural institutions want to put on the table. What we learn from that discussion and from others during the week will help refine strategies for the first rough draft of the Downtown Master Plan. You’ll sense preliminary progress in that direction when we do a “pin-up” of ideas Thursday morning at 10, also at the Branigan Cultural Center.

All the times and room locations are in the schedule.

Hope to see you. But if you can’t attend in person, follow progress throughout the week here on this website. Questions and comments are welcome here.