A public meeting was held Wednesday night at Columbia Middle School to talk about streetscape and intersection improvements in the Sheridan-Loucks Triangle form-based code area. It’s a small stretch of Sheridan road, bounded by the south side of Hanssler on the north, and the north side of McClure on the south.

The process for making changes is outlined on this document that was distributed at the meeting. In addition to public meetings like the one Wednesday where anyone can give input, a Citizen Advisory Group (CAG) either has been or will be established that will include key stakeholders and presumably will require a greater time commitment (i.e., more meetings). I don’t know who is on the CAG, but I will try to find out. Currently, I know that no one from the Heart of Peoria Commission is on it, but perhaps there are plans to appoint someone.

If you can’t make it to the meetings, but would like to give some input, page two of the aforementioned document is a Community Context Audit Form. It needs to be returned by next Wednesday, March 12, which doesn’t give you a lot of time, but it will give you an opportunity to have your voice heard by the design team.

This project is not going to happen overnight. The timetable is spread out so that the final recommendation won’t come before the council until late September this year (tentatively). That may sound like a long time, but it’s only six months, and it will fly by quickly. The important thing is that progress is being made. Everyone’s hope and expectation is that this will be a successful implementation of the Heart of Peoria Plan, form-based codes, and public-private partnerships to revitalize an older area of town, and that it will be a model for the rest of the Heart of Peoria Plan area to follow.

I arrived at the meeting a little late Wednesday, but found the presentations and question and answer time very interesting. There were about 50 people in attendance, including District 150 Superintendent Ken Hinton, which I thought was notable. The best part was after the presentations when we got to interact one-on-one with the consultants and city staff. Throughout the gymnasium, there were several stations set up with maps, engineering drawings, artists’ renderings, etc., that explored different aspects of the planning process, including one station that had a computerized traffic simulation of the area.

I’m encouraged by what I’m seeing as this project moves forward.