NOW Visioning
Martin County Community Redevelopment Agency

What is NOW Visioning

When the CRAs were first initiated, the Agency, through outreach and significant citizen input, created a vision plan for each area based upon the desires of the citizens at that time.

Each Vision Plan provides a roadmap of projects targeted to improve the areas’ physical environment and boost the economy of the area. The issue, caused by a severe change in market direction has revealed the fragility of such plans. A change in revenue stream, caused by external circumstances, such as the market devaluation of property values, has demonstrated that projects and plans written some ten (10) years ago do not now have the same prospect of completion according to the previously planned timeframe.

NOW Visioning and Community Planning

The term NOW Visioning has been used here as a way of describing the present community planning needs. NOW, within the scope of this report stands for Neighborhood Opportunities Workshop.

Each NOW Visioning event sought input from the citizens from each CRA. This report shows the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities that were identified by each community group. Those results were compiled and compared with the Vision Plans of each CRA Plan. It is the intent of this report to bring forward those comparisons in a way that sets out specific Activity Focus for each area. Activity Focus that is related both to the existing CRA plan and to the NOW Visioning results.

The final report should be used as a tool to provide an economic response to current trends, to set benchmarks, to reset priorities, analyze the success of completed projects and identify opportunities for partnerships with public and private stakeholders.

NOW Visioning Analysis

Community Development Staff collected and analyzed hard data from the Martin County Mapping Services to better understand the existing conditions of each of the Planning Areas. The purpose of the analysis is to illustrate to residents the myriad of assets and patterns of each of the planning areas. The community X-Rays. Like medical X-Rays or CAT Scans, these drawings isolate a physical element, such as streets, to illustrate patterns and opportunities that may be difficult to perceive when combined with other uses in a single drawing. By studying the natural and manmade systems of each of the planning areas, the underlying patterns, problems and opportunities of a neighborhood are unveiled. These X-Rays represent existing use patterns and not the future land use as defined in the Martin County Growth Management Comprehensive Plan.

Download NOW Visioning Report

You can download the Complete NOW Visioning Report, or the chapter neighborhood reports (smaller file size and less download time) from the links on the right of this page.