The Downtown Area Redevelopment Plan is looking to set up an advisory committee to provide input on projects for Lloydminster’s downtown.
DARP is a framework for the development of the downtown core that will help in rejuvenating the City as a whole. Part of DARP is to have an advisory committee that will have members giving advice, identifying resources and offering suggestions for projects.
In the DARP proposal, members of the committee will include one person from Council, a maximum of five people representing downtown businesses and property owners, maximum of five members representing the arts, culture, faith and Aboriginal groups and a maximum of three individuals representing senior and youth groups.
City Councilor Stephanie Munro says it’s important to involve the average person on the committee because they are the ones spending the time and money in the downtown.
“I think that it’s very important to include all of our community because we do want to see just with the members and residents at large that don’t have an invested interest in the downtown what’s going to bring them to the downtown.”
The committee unlike most will be a non-voting committee and also will not record minutes rather the committee will have an open discussion about the plans for the downtown. Munro says she forecasts there to be a lot of interest in the committee.
“These are strictly going to be an ideas networking so that everybody’s sitting there, everybody’s throwing their opinions and their ideas out on the table, but we have hired a contractor to develop this plan and they’re going to be the ones that really do make the final decisions and then Council will approve that plan.”
There will be a criterion set out for anyone interested in joining the membership that will be released in the next few weeks.