Strategic Planning for Downtowns
Strategic Planning for Downtowns
By: Jill Bahm, AICP and Leigh Young, AICPWhat is Strategic Planning?
Strategic planning is a way for downtown or district organizations to decide where they want to go in the future and how to get there. It’s like making a map for the downtown or district’s future, outlining goals and the steps needed to achieve them.It’s typically intended as a short-term process that focuses on strategic opportunities presented to a downtown or district organization and that results in a plan for specific actions over a short-mid-range time horizon. A strategic plan can also set the stage for a longer-range planning process, such as for a master plan or comprehensive plan.
In general, a strategic plan identifies opportunities for improvements within your downtown or district, as well as opportunities for the internal growth and development that will strengthen your organization. Your strategic plan will include goals, strategies and actions related to both your downtown or district and organization. The plan will identify downtown-based projects and programs to implement as well as defining an organizational mission and structure that is needed to be most effective to implement them. It will serve to guide the work of the organization over a period of time.
A strategic plan can also focus on one singular topic or area of focus, examples include:
- Revitalization Plan: This type of plan focuses on improving infrastructure, increasing foot traffic, and attracting businesses to create a more vibrant downtown.
- Economic Development Plan: Focused on fostering local businesses and attracting new ones, this strategy seeks to boost the economic growth of the downtown area by leveraging assets and addressing local needs.
- Cultural or Arts-Based Strategic Plan: Designed to enhance the cultural footprint of the downtown, this plan might focus on developing arts districts, hosting festivals, or incorporating public art to attract visitors and create a unique identity.
- Sustainability or Green Space Plan: This strategy focuses on enhancing environmental sustainability, such as increasing green spaces, promoting eco-friendly infrastructure, and reducing the area's carbon footprint.
- Marketing Plan: Aimed at increasing visibility and attracting visitors, this plan often includes branding efforts, special events, and partnerships with local businesses to promote the downtown as a destination.
- Community Engagement or Inclusion Plan: This type of plan focuses on fostering stronger connections within the community by creating opportunities for residents, businesses, and stakeholders to collaborate. It might include initiatives like public forums, volunteer events, or social campaigns designed to build trust, increase participation, and ensure that everyone feels included in the downtown's future.
Strategic planning helps communities think ahead and plan for the future, rather than just reacting to great ideas – or problems - as they come up. It’s also helpful when boards and organizations get out of sync or lose momentum, because a well-crafted strategic plan can help refocus efforts, re-energize stakeholders, and pull everyone back together. By clearly defining priorities and creating a roadmap, it keeps the community focused, adaptable, and better prepared to navigate challenges, enabling intentional and sustainable growth.
How is it used to guide the work of an organization over a period of time?
A strategic plan serves as a living document that guides the organization's decisions and actions over a set period, typically 3-5 years. It provides a clear framework for prioritizing initiatives, allocating resources, and measuring progress toward specific goals. By setting a vision and outlining actionable steps, the organization can stay focused on long-term objectives, ensuring that day-to-day activities align with the broader mission and direction. Regular reviews and updates keep it relevant and adaptable as circumstances change.
How does a strategic plan differ from a DDA/TIF Plan?
A strategic plan outlines the overallvision, goals, and long-term priorities of an organization, and can focus on various aspects noted above, like economic development, community engagement, and infrastructure improvements. It serves as a roadmap for the future and includes broad strategies to achieve these goals.
In contrast, a DDA/TIF (Downtown Development Authority/Tax Increment Financing) Plan is more specific and legally binding, often focusing on the use of tax increment financing to fund infrastructure projects or other improvements in a defined area. The TIF plan is typically focused on generating and managing revenue for specific projects, while a strategic plan is more comprehensive and forward-looking.
What are the Key Steps in Strategic Planning?
The process of developing a strategic plan typically begins with gathering input from stakeholders to assess current conditions and identify future opportunities. This is followed by setting a vision, defining goals, and establishing actionable strategies to achieve them. The process often includes:
- Initial assessment of the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges (SWOT analysis). Look at what’s happening inside the community (its strengths and weaknesses) and outside it (opportunities and challenges). This helps in understanding what’s happening today and in anticipating what might impact future conditions.
- Stakeholder engagement with organizational staff, officials, businesses, residents and others. Strive to collect input and build consensus.
- Vision, mission, and goal development. Define a clear vision and outlining measurable goals. Start by figuring out what your community wants to achieve (the vision) and why it exists (the mission). This gives everyone a clear idea of the organization’s purpose and long-term goals. Decide on specific goals that the organization wants to reach. These goals should be clear, realistic, and have deadlines to help measure progress.
- Action plan development. Developing actionable strategies to achieve the set goals. Create detailed plans on how to achieve these goals. This includes figuring out who will do what, by when, and what resources are needed.
- Progress review to see how things are going. This is an important step that is often overlooked, but regular assessment helps ensure the community stays on track and allows for changes if needed based on new information or circumstances.
A successful strategic plan is inclusive and reflects the input of various stakeholders. This typically includes:
- Board members and leadership of the organization
- Local business owners, residents, and community leaders
- Local government officials and representatives from local planning and economic development agencies
- Experts or consultants with experience in strategic planning or specific areas like economic development
Now that you have a baseline understanding of what a strategic plan is and the vital role it plays in guiding your organization and downtown or district’s future development, here are some additional best practices to ensure your organization will be able to effectively utilize your strategic plan as a resource for continued success.
Establish board member leadership: Board members should be a driving force behind strategic plan creation and implementation, so it is critical to establish their engagement and leadership from the start of the process and ensure the strategic plan remains top of mind during every meeting. Board members will likely be involved in workshops or group meetings as the strategic plan is being created so before the process is started, outline clear expectations for their involvement and attendance during the entire process.
Cultivating this leadership early on – and maintaining momentum through the planning process – is essential because once the plan has been completed and adopted by the board, progress on strategic plan implementation should be an agenda item at all upcoming board meetings, ensuring every project or initiative is on target.
In addition, the strategic plan should be added to board orientation materials to ensure new board members understand the vision/mission, goals and action items of the organization. Board members can use the strategic plan to determine the projects and initiatives they would like to help implement based on their knowledge, skillset or interest.
Ultimately, the board is charged with implementing the strategic plan so determining board engagement strategies at the start of the process all the way through implementation should be part of the development of your strategic plan.
Integratefoundational planning documents with your strategic plan: Before embarking on developing your strategic plan, it is a good idea to review the foundational planning documents that guide growth and development for your municipality. These include the community master plan, economic development strategy, capital improvement plan, Downtown Development Authority TIF Plan, and any other guiding documents that pertain toyour downtown or district. In each document be sure to review the sections that reference goals, strategies and actions for your downtown or district and determine how your strategic plan can either incorporate strategies and actions or maintain alignment with the core priorities and goals of the municipality as stated in these planning documents.
Incorporate data:To best identify goals, strategies and actions within your strategic plan your organization should gain an understanding of basic demographic and economic data. This could include the following:
- Basic population data:Shifts in overall population numbers, population forecast, and the population breakdown by age group
- Demographic information: age, race/ethnicity, educational attainment
- Economic data:median household income, employment by occupation and major community employers, inflow/outflow data showing commuting patterns
More sophisticated data, usually available for purchase, that is helpful to strategic planning efforts include:
- Psychographic data:Information that details consumer traits, behaviors and preferences can be obtained from a variety of sources.
- Geofencing data:Geofencing or mobile phone data that shows visitation patterns to your downtown or district related to common days and times people visit and where visitors go during and after they visit.
- Sales surplus and leakage data: Economic trends and realities for the business environment including overall sales, retail performance and market strengths, and gaps in the business mix that could be filled by new or expanded businesses.
Identify community and organizational assets: Strategic plans should start with a foundation of what’s unique and/or what’s working in the community and/or organization. Assets can be anything from physical attributes to destination businesses or cultural amenities; organizational assets can be related to the resources board members have access to or the skillsets of board members and volunteers. It is important for your organization to identify the strengths, challenges and opportunities of your organization and downtown or district as well as the amenities you have, as these items will inform your organization’s priorities for continued development and the types of projects and programming to work on to strengthen your downtown or district and your organization.
Many strategic planning processes will incorporate a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) or Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results (SOAR) analysis allowing your organization to identify opportunities to leverage or build from with the goals, strategies and actions outlined in your strategic plan. In addition to this analysis, your organization should undertake a process of mapping or identifying the assets in and surrounding your downtown or district and the assets within your organization.
Engage the community:Community engagement is critical for a well-rounded strategic plan that addresses the vision and priorities of community members and key stakeholder groups. Feedback from community members should be gathered using a variety of methods which most commonly include interactive surveys, workshops/open houses, focus group meetings, and one-on-one interviews. The feedback gathered can provide anecdotal data to support the market and demographic data described earlier, which can help your organization continue to identify trends and the desires of community members related to your downtown or district.
Remember to engage municipal elected officials and staff as partners,in addition to other key stakeholder groups like community organizations, and business and property owners to understand mutual priorities. All the feedback that is gathered can help to determine your strategic plan goals and strategies and the projects, programming and partnerships that can be created to help fulfill them.
When engaging with the community, your organization should set clear and realistic expectations about what the organization can do to address community member concerns and feedback. There will likely be some issues that are outside the purview of your organization’s main mission and the priorities set within your strategic plan. Clearly communicating your organization’s mission with community members and key stakeholders can help you navigate this issue.
Create plan goals and align priorities: During improvement within your organization. The board should use the feedback and discussions to identify a vision, mission, and goalsas part of the strategic plan. Your organizationshould thendefine strategies and actions related to these goals for your downtown or district and/ororganization. Other actions/strategies that come up during the planning process should only be included if they align with the goals in the strategic plan. The strategies and actions that are identified in the strategic plan will provide an outline of the priority projects and initiatives the board and organization will implement to ensure the goals are being met.
Develop and use the implementation structure: This is one of the most important components of your strategic plan. Your strategic plan will includean implementation chart or matrix to help determine appropriate timing for the implementation of all goals, strategies, and initiatives over the timeframe of the strategic plan. Regularly assessing progress on the initiatives listed in the plan and sharing that progress with stakeholders and the wider community can help maintain support for the organization. The implementation structure can also be used to develop annual work plans that include timelines, tasks and a budget for each project or initiative.The implementation structure of your strategic plan deserves a fair amount of attention as it is what can help ensure your organization is using your plan most effectively to foster downtown and organizational improvement.
Identify project champions:Your strategic plan can be a great tool for volunteer recruitment. Through identifying projects and initiatives to implement, the organization can also identify project champion roles and responsibilities as well as project tasks that need general volunteer support. Project champions should be identified in the plan,along with staff and board members,as an additional leadership role to help carry out projects listed in the plan. Project champions could be board or committee members but could be stakeholders with a vested interest in the organization’s success. Project champions will be responsible for additional volunteer recruitment and management, continually reporting progress to the board, and evaluating the success of projects and programming once they are completed. Identifying project champions can add additional capacity to your organization to help ensure the strategic plan is effectively implemented.
Measure progress: It is essential to continually assess whether your projects and initiatives are meeting the goals outlined in your strategic plan. To this end, the strategic plan should identify measurable outcomes or key performance indicators that will allow your organization to evaluate projects and programs. Typical metrics that can be used to measure the success of projects and initiatives include:
- Private and public investment in the downtown or district
- Number of new businesses and changes to the business mix
- Property sale and rent rates
- Taxable and assessed value of the downtown or district
- Number and type of new housing units
- Number of façade and/or building rehabilitations
- Number and value of volunteer hours
- Number of event attendees
- Number of visitors or foot traffic within the downtown or district.
The board should determine the metrics that align with the priorities and goals included in the strategic plan and then use them to evaluate your projects and programs. Once you have evaluated your projects and programming the board should determine which projects and programs were successful.
Your organization can then share the progress you are making towards implementing the strategic plan by highlighting the key metrics that indicate success and communicating the improvements that have been made to your downtown or district with stakeholders to maintain their buy-in and support of your organization.
Consider working with a third-party facilitator: Developing a strategic plan is a very large undertaking for an organization. To create a strategic plan that addresses community feedback, incorporates data and includes all the components of an effective strategic plan your organization can consider working with a third-party facilitator to conduct the strategic plan process. A third-party facilitator will have the skillset and knowledge to lead your organization through developing goals, strategies and activities as well as be able to compile the items in the plan into an implementation structure identifying relevant and realistic timelines for projects to be completed. In addition, they will be able to guide conversations with key stakeholders and within the board to ensure feedback and organizational priorities are summarized within the plan. Third-party facilitators are also effective at communicating recommendations and best practices for your organization to consider including within the plan for the betterment of your downtown or district.
There are many types of third-party facilitators, some focus solely on strategic planning for organizations while others focus on community and economic development or community and downtown planning. When choosing a third-party facilitator ask for examples of previous plans they have developed for communities that are similar to yours and review them to see if the style of the plan aligns with your organization’s needs. You could also opt to work with the planning or community and economic development consultant your municipality works with as they likely have a relationship and baseline familiarity with your community. Either option is good for the board to consider as working with a third-party facilitator can be very beneficial when developing a strategic plan that will guide your organization for years to come.
This list of tips is not exhaustive, but by following some of these best practices, your organization will be well on its way to having a strategic plan that can guide your organization’s success and help you be effective in implementing projects and programming that will improve your downtown or district.