Vision 2037 still being revised

Published 12:00 pm Tuesday, October 27, 2015

City planners and the Oxford Planning Commission are continuing to tweak and edit Vision 2037, the city’s future comprehensive plan up for possible adoption by the Oxford Board of Aldermen.

On Monday, the planning commission met to review a few more suggested changes to the plan and hold another public hearing.

The changes included adding the Rail Trails area in the plan even though the University of Mississippi owns it, since the city of Oxford owns an easement; change the image for the rural area; and include a one-page summary on the Vision 2037 in the front of the document to give the reader a better understanding of the plan.

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Copies of the plan became available for residents to view last month and are still available online at www.oxfordms.net, at the Oxford and Lafayette County Public Library in the reference section and at City Hall. Several public hearings have been held to continue to gain input from residents on how they want to see the city to grow.

The Orion Planning Group was hired in March to create Vision 2037 and is headed up by Bob Barber who presented the proposed changes Monday as well as explaining the process.

“We are in the final stages,” Barber said. “We’ve had many focus groups, multiple avenues to gain public input, planning workshops and now we are in the review stage for the final draft.”

Barber said he hopes to get the final document before the aldermen to vote on sometime in November.

The plan has four major components to keep Oxford the way residents and leaders want:

— Preservation of existing neighborhoods and the Courthouse Square.

— Greatly enhanced form and function of commercial areas.

— Frame the basic direction for expansion and align future development in those areas with Oxford’s adopted Guiding Principals.

— Align the remaining developable places with Oxford’s Planning Principles.

City Planner Andrea Correll said while reading over the Vision 2037 draft again, a few more changes needed to be made before asking the commission to vote on the final draft.

“We have some corrections, mostly editing, typographical errors to fix before submitting it,” she said Monday. “We need to do some more refining.”

Local developer Mike Bridges was the only person to speak during the public hearing. He is objecting to the plan that would make his undeveloped property zoned as suburban, single family instead of the multi-residential zoning it has now.

The commission could vote to recommend approval to the Board of Aldermen at its next meeting on Nov. 9.