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Imagine Salem’s historic downtown and City Center enhanced - into a revitalized, welcoming, and vibrant community gathering place, a magnet for visitors, where unique, distinctive establishments are waiting to be discovered.
Imagine a City Center that bustles from morning to night with a diverse array of special places to shop, live, work, and enjoy entertainment. Now, that vision may be just around the corner!
Vision 2020 is a community-wide process that will help shape the future of Salem’s City Center.
Beginning in the summer of 2007, a group of Salem's large City Center employers began discussing the future of the heart of the City - downtown, north downtown and the Edgewater/Wallace area of West Salem.
Together, the group considered the diversity of uses in the core area, employment centers, housing, recreation opportunities, transit, vehicular and pedestrian circulation, and parking. The group also heard from more than 3,500 Salem residents, employees and visitors who offered ideas to help create a new vision for Salem's City Center.
The Vision 2020 Team is a growing collaboration that now includes the State of Oregon, Marion County, Willamette University, Go Downtown Salem!, Salem-Keizer School District, the Chamber of Commerce, Salem Convention and Visitors Association, Chemeketa Community College, Salem-Keizer Transit, the Salem Hospital and General Growth Properties. Councilors Rogers and Tesler serve with the Mayor - who chairs the Team.
Twenty four leading ideas have emerged from the community discussion under five broad themes. People are asking that the City Center:
- Provide places for people to live and gather . This theme includes projects like a plaza or a town square, expanding the diversity of places and activities for youth, developing new downtown housing, and coordinating access to services for people in need.
- Create a vibrant destination . This theme includes actions like more restaurants and shopping, later hours, performing arts venues and live music, more public art and promotion of local artists.
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Get involved!
To learn more about Vision 2020
or to volunteer please contact
Annie Gorski at
503.588.6178 Ext 7555 or
vision2020@cityofsalem.net
March 11 Open House Photos &
Streaming Video@12 min
Community Survey Responses
#1, #2, #3
Upcoming Team Meetings
September 11, 2008,
3:30- 5:30 , Mission Mill
Dye House
Bicycle/Pedestrian Connections
Work Group
1st Wednesday's monthly
12-1:30 pm -Next Meeting: July 2,
Pringle Hall Community Center,
606 Church Street, NE
Town Square Work Group
Next Meeting: Friday,
June 27, 1-2:30,
City of Salem Urban Dept,
350 Commercial Street, NE
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- Preserve and enhance the look and feel of the historic City Center . In addition to highlighting the historic character and protecting the character of the adjoining residential neighborhoods, this theme includes popular ideas like creating welcoming entrances for the City Center and making the sidewalks and streetscape pedestrian friendly, clean and attractive with wayfinding signage.
- Expand options to get about the City Center . The focus of this theme is creating better connections between east and West Salem, improving bicycle and pedestrian access, developing a trolley or people mover, and managing parking resources.
- Improve connections to parks and rivers. Two project ideas: creating more riverfront and creek corridors and trails, as well as providing more activities and facilities in Riverfront Park. These ideas really focus on taking advantage of the waterways moving through the City Center.
Next Steps
From here, the Team is gearing up to make the vision a reality. Following an upcoming Team meeting to review feedback from the March 11 Open House and a design workshop with the Salem AIA, the Team will begin developing the projects with supporting organizations in the community. Organizations like Go Downtown Salem will take the lead in delivering more restaurants with outdoor seating and securing later opening hours for businesses and restaurants in the downtown core. Salem Keizer Transit will take the lead in developing a frequent reliable shuttle service around the City Center. And, the City will likely take the lead, with the support of all the partners, in piloting a town square. A Council Work Session is scheduled for April 7. In June, the Team will hold its first quarterly progress briefing.
Want to get involved?
E-mail or call 503-588-6178 and speak with Annie Gorski or Courtney Knox.
Community Input - What You've Said
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