The City of Rockdale and the Rockdale Municipal Development District (RMDD) recently secured the firm Freese & Nichols to help the city create a 30-year Comprehensive Plan.
“Generally a comprehensive plan provides a road map for how a city is going to grow and look in the future,” said Rockdale City Manager Barbara Holly. “Freese & Nichols is one of the best firms in the state for this kind of work and we are lucky to have such a talented planning team working with us.”
The Rockdale MidCentury Plan is an effort to envision what Rockdale will look like in the 2050’s.
“The first step will be to establish a clear community vision,” said Rockdale Mayor Brett Boren. “We need to identify what is sacred about Rockdale and can never change.”
The plan looks at many different aspects of the community which can be improved such as housing, parks, utilities, the economy and traffic.
Boren continued, “We want Rockdale to keep its small-town charm. But how do we keep that identity with the new subdivision and other growth coming this way? This planning exercise will help us answer these questions.”
The plan will also look at traffic and mobility.
“Everyone knows that traffic on US 79 is awful, but what are we going to do about it?” asked Nathan Bland, RMDD Board President. “This plan will help give us clarification and direction.”
Rockdale residents are asked and encouraged to be involved in the process.
“We will be having a series of stakeholder and town hall meetings to get the public’s input, providing the data needed to write the plan,” explained Jim Gibson, RMDD economic development director. “Freese & Nichols created a separate website for folks to take a community survey and sign up for email alerts.”
RockdaleMidCentury-Plans. com also has a mapping feature where users can pin places they love, problem areas, make suggestions and upvote ideas. The community survey has been extended to close on July 31.
The city and planners have already held a couple of workshops and stakeholder meetings. The planning process will take approximately 15 months and should be complete by August/September 2024.
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