Did you make it to the Bull Run Greenway Charrette last fall? Did you enjoy it? Were you not able to get there? You're going to get another chance to fit an energizing community visioning exercise into your schedule in late April. The LNC is excited to announce that a River Town Planning Charrette will take place on Wednesday, April 27, from 6 to 9pm at the Lewisburg Club (131 Market St). Please join us for pizza and planning that evening. There will also be an optional site tour starting at 5:30pm at the intersection of N Water and St Anthony Streets. As was the case in November, we'd love to have you there for as much of the evening as possible. We encourage you to make whatever portion of it your schedule allows. (The two break out sessions will run from 6:45 to 7:30 and 7:30 to 8:15.)
The public is invited to participate in a collaborative design workshop to look at the potential of the publicly owned land along waterways in Lewisburg Borough. As with all River Town Team activities, this event is open to anyone with an interest in the community’s connection to the Susquehanna, whether or not they are residents or property owners in the Borough. This is an issue with bearing on the daily lives, recreational options, and environmental health of more than just those with standing inside the Borough’s boundaries.
The Lewisburg River Town Team began in 2014 as a collaboration between the Borough, the Lewisburg Neighborhoods Corporation, the Lewisburg Downtown Partnership, and the Buffalo Valley Recreation Authority, all working closely with the Susquehanna Greenway Partnership. A kick-off public meeting that fall established the priorities for the group and since then committees have been meeting working in several areas: events, conservation, planning, and connectivity.
This semester a group of Bucknell University seniors in the Environmental Studies program are working with the LNC on a semester long capstone project which will move this project forward substantially. A need for a more in depth planning and design process had been noted earlier and the students are helping to put on the charrette to accomplish that next step.
As a companion and complement to the charrette, the students are also circulating a River Town Survey to gauge attitudes toward, interest in, and current and desired levels of engagement with the river locally. The survey is available to be completed either online or in a print version. You can find it online here. You can pick up a print version from the Lewisburg Borough Office (55 S 5th St, Lewisburg). In addition print copies have been provided to many area churches and retirement communities (those willing to participate); ask at your church or community office if you are part of the survey program. Print copies can either be mailed to the Borough or dropped off in the submission box inside the Borough Office (open 8 to 4:30, M-F). As with the design workshop, anyone in the area is welcome to complete the survey. We would like to have very broad participation.
People may recall that another design charrette was held last fall focused specifically on the Bull Run Greenway running through Hufnagle Park. The draft plan resulting from that ongoing process was presented publicly last week and is available on the LNC website for review now. This upcoming event will be similar in some ways but will have a broader scope and look at sites as diverse as Wolfe Field (along Buffalo Creek), the Community Garden, Soldiers Memorial Park, Mariah’s Garden, and the St George St boat ramp. It will seek to put existing and new ideas together and start to establish priorities and a critical path for the process moving forward.
