Pilot Point’s Downtown Master Plan has earned it state-level recognition.
The downtown plan, which is one prong of the Comprehensive Plan set the city developed with help from consultant group LJA, earned the gold award for economic development planning for the Downtown Master Plan, which was developed in partnership with LJA Engineering.
“This award reflects the hard work that our staff put into it,” City Manager Britt Lusk said. “This was an 18-month long project. This came from our staff, from our consultants, from the citizens of Pilot Point, and to see that work awarded at this level means a lot.”
The award comes from the American Planning Association-Texas Chapter.
Development Services Director John Taylor was pleased that the work the city and LJA did was recognized in such a way, and he was highly complimentary of LJA project manager Abra Nusser.
“I’ve worked with different consultants over the many years of doing comprehensive plans, and I’ve never felt like a consultant put in as much effort to get to know the city and the values and the opinions of the [community] as much as Abra and LJA did,” Taylor said.
The community input may have helped put the city over the top.
“That, and the extra design work that LJA put into the downtown plan I would think went into it,” he said. “That was one of the things that we picked LJA for out of all the other consultants that were vying for that work, was that they promised us a lot of in-depth public participation opportunities.”
That was key for the staff. “The more participation you have, the more buy-in you have and the more it gets implemented and less it sits on the shelf,” Taylor said.
Lusk also said he believes the level of community engagement helped make the difference and allowed the city to earn that award.
“Because of that community involvement, it truly reflects what Pilot Point wants in our downtown master plan, and it truly protects our heritage while planning for the future and that economic development and that growth, which is what we were awarded for,” Lusk said.
The Downtown Master Plan is one of three prongs within the Master Plan Set that was approved on April 15 with a vote of 6-1 and that included feedback from 446 responses to community surveys and 200 in-person interactions during the creation process.
There will be a public portal using the software Envisio, projected to be available in the fall, for community members to track the progress and outcome of the comprehensive plan.
“It’s always the intent to implement whatever plan that you do, but the more that you have tools to be able to really track that and to hold everybody accountable, it’s more likely to get done,” Taylor said.
Lusk said McKinney, Denton and some other North Texas cities use the program to help increase transparency for the public in such projects.
He also said that the current trend of awards Pilot Point has earned for plans and other work it has done shows the efforts of the staff to serve the community well.
“We’ve been recognized for our library, for our budget book, for our Keep Pilot Point Beautiful, now for this,” Lusk said. “We want to create a city that follows the best practices and that our citizens can be proud of, and I think looking at the past several years and what we’ve been able to accomplish as a city [helps with that].”
He added that he’s proud not only of his staff, but also of the “council that supported us.”
Lusk also added that the team that crafted the plan is confident enough in it to submit it for possible national awards, but the city won’t hear back about that until the fall.
“We’ve submitted on the national stage as well,” Lusk said, later adding, “… That’s how much we believe in this plan, and what we’ve done. It’s not only a gold standard award recognized plan for the state of Texas. We think it’s that on the national level, that it’s that good, and we stand behind it.”
