Consultants from RDG Planning and Design, and Garver, have been working on Norman’s new 25-year area and infrastructure master plan.
The project, known as AIM Norman, will create a comprehensive plan compiling master plans from seven specific areas. The project will research and create plans for land use, housing, transportation, water, stormwater, wastewater and parks. The individual master plans will go into the comprehensive master plan.
A comprehensive plan provides recommendations for future city development and planning strategies across multiple areas based on existing development, policy initiatives, economic conditions and public input.
“I would say they (comprehensive plans) are pretty important, you know, because in the development of the city you want a roadmap,” Ladan Mozaffarian, assistant professor of urban planning, said.
Consultants hope to create a comprehensive plan that gives Norman a roadmap with community goals and values as a guiding principle.
“A Comprehensive Plan represents a crucial road map that provides essential guidance to City staff and City Council when planning for the future,” Mary Mach, Garver vice president and Western Region director, wrote in an email to OU Daily. “It shares the values of the community as it pertains to commercial, industrial, and residential growth and development.”
To keep community goals in view, the AIM Norman Steering Committee was established to help guide the planning and provide community feedback. The Steering Committee meets monthly and has meetings scheduled up to July 10. Sub-committees focused on five of the seven areas covered were also formed.
Once sub-committees have received community feedback and done relevant fieldwork and research, they will create a master plan for their designated area. Sub-committees are made up of local area experts and community members concerned with their specific topic.
In addition to the committees, community feedback is being gathered through monthly surveys, focus groups and neighborhood workshops where community members can provide feedback on each of the specific areas and ask RDG and Garver staff members questions.
Monthly community surveys asked about land use, housing, stormwater, water, transportation and parks.
Up until now, seven workshops have been held. A summary of six of the workshops is available on the AIM Norman website. Data from five of the seven focus areas is available within the summary.
Community members said the top three housing needs are more mixed-use housing, small multi-family apartments and duplexes. For transportation, community members said they want more accommodations for bikers and pedestrians.
Workshop attendees also said they would support more water recycling in Lake Thunderbird, that they are concerned with the quality of water discharged from the water treatment facility and were equally concerned about the economics and safety of stormwater projects.
At the seventh workshop, held at Kennedy Elementary just east of 12th Avenue, Adam Ross, a transportation subcommittee member, said he is particularly concerned with adding more housing, traffic safety and stormwater planning. Ross also showed concern with the relatively low number of people involved in the project.
Lisa Krieg, the Norman Community Development Block grant director, said turnout was low at the first couple of workshops but has picked up at the last few workshops.
“Ironically, the most popular one that we did was Lakeview (Elementary),” Krieg said. “Way out east north of the lake.”
Of the six workshops listed in the AIM Norman workshop summary, a total of 97 people, out of Norman’s 129,627 residents, attended and gave input.
"I think we have (enough) community input. You're never going to please everybody, right," Mayor Larry Heikkila said. "But there's enough community input in there to make it work reasonably right."
While Heikkila is content with the level of community input, some believe the process hasn’t been inclusive enough.
“I’m really really excited and actually so happy that Norman is taking this route and they have announced the community engagement events very well,” Mozaffarian said. “But I believe it’s not that inclusive.”
Mozaffarian said spreading the word throughout OU and local schools would help boost community engagement.
The comprehensive nature of the plan is a shift from Norman’s existing master plan strategy. The master plans currently active are separate documents focused on individual areas with little consideration for other plans.
Norman’s water reclamation plan, which addresses wastewater, is from 2001. The stormwater master plan is from 2007.
Norman also has the Norman 2025 Land Use and Transportation Plan, developed in 2004. The 2025 plan will be out of date soon.
“It’s the first time that the City of Norman has done this all at once,” Krieg said.
In 2019, RDG completed a comprehensive plan for Shawnee, Oklahoma. According to the contract between RDG and Shawnee, Shawnee paid RDG $185,000 monthly.
In July 2023, Norman agreed to pay RDG up to $2,394,627. RDG is listed as the lead consultant with Garver as a subcontractor.
RDG has created comprehensive plans in the past for such as Oklahoma City and Midland, Texas.
According to the timeline for AIM Norman, the individual areas should have master plans finished by October.
In February, Shavonne Evans, steering committee co-chair, said the project was behind schedule.
“We might see a little bit of extra time there at the end. And it really gets down to each individual master plan. Because now, many of the committees are working on those,” Amy Haase, RDG Principal said. “And, you know, we have some subcommittee members that are still kind of early in their practices and thinking, geez, maybe we need to review some.”
As it stands, no additional workshops have been announced. However, community feedback is still ongoing as the AIM Norman website currently has an interactive map where community members can map their frequented walking or biking origins and destinations.
This article was edited by Ismael Lele, Anusha Fathepure and Peggy Dodd.
