Central Receives Grant for Master Plan

Submitted by David Barrow

    The city of Central has received $320,125 in Gustav/Ike Disaster Recovery Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds through the Comprehensive Resiliency Program toward completion of the Central’s Master Plan.   Community resiliency, the capability to anticipate risk, limit impact, and bounce back in the face of turbulent change, is the basis for this funding.

    A grant request was submitted to the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) by the city of Central on March 17, 2010 for inclusion in the program.  The city council approved a resolution expressing support for the funding as well.  Notification was sent to those agencies who were awarded funding on June 21, 2010.

     The funds are to be used for activities associated with assembling, surveying, and reviewing existing planning and zoning documents; activities associated with exploring and assessing Louisiana Toolkit, Smart Growth principles, and other contemporary trends; activities associated with the development of design guidelines and pattern book documents for use in implementation of a new development code; activities associated with development of implementation strategies and more detailed planning of the City Center; and other activities associated with completion of the Master Plan.

    “This is a tremendous step towards our continued work on our Master Plan,” states David Barrow, Executive Assistant for the city of Central, who submitted the application to LRA.  “The Moore Planning Group and our zoning attorney, Mark Balkin, have done an outstanding job with our Master Plan so far, and we look forward to using these CDBG funds to be able to do even more work than anticipated to help plan the future of Central.”