ARLINGTON, Texas -- A downtown area dotted with retail shops, restaurants, entertainment venues and more housing may be one step closer to reality. The City Council, which has long advocated downtown revitalization, is counting on John Fregonese, a nationally known urban planning consultant, to help make the dream a reality.

"We want an environment that would appeal to a lot of people," Mayor Robert Cluck said Friday. "This is a public-private partnership. The city will depend upon private development to carry out our vision."

The Central Arlington Initiative Steering Committee, a 35-member group made up of government officials, community leaders and property owners, will be working with Fregonese through year's end to develop and begin implementing a plan for revitalizing downtown.

Though downtown has not been precisely defined yet, it could be bounded by the University of Texas at Arlington on the south, Collins Street on the east, Interstate 30 on the north and Davis Drive on the west. Using money from the Downtown Tax Increment Finance District fund, the city is paying Fregonese $ 50,000 plus expenses for a projected total of about $ 85,000. The TIF money has been dedicated for revitalizing downtown.

Over the years, the city has conducted studies on redeveloping downtown and devised about a half-dozen plans but implemented little from them. The city's plans do not match master plans from UT-Arlington, Tarrant County and the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, which functions as the city's economic development arm.

"Over the past 10 to 15 years and numbers of planning efforts, our desire now is to help combine and unify those plans," said Karen Brophy, the city's planning and development director. Fregonese's job will be to work with the steering committee to unify those development plans into one comprehensive strategy. Fregonese and the steering committee met Monday, the day he was hired, to unveil a list of tasks and meetings to accomplish this goal.

His first task will be to review the plans and develop a composite. He will help the committee conduct public outreach from May to October, to get as much comment from residents as possible. He will meet with the steering committee for a three-day workshop in June to get the committee members' vision for the city's future. He will then develop a master plan based on the workshop's results.

The committee will meet with Fregonese in July for another workshop to review and adopt the revised master plan, and then develop a strategy to make the master plan happen. Fregonese hopes the committee can adopt a plan in September and November, and then begin developing implementation tools, such as urban design standards and infrastructure projects.

Fregonese, 52, has been involved in urban planning for 25 years, working with small towns such as Denton and Argyle, bigger cities such as Portland, Ore., and major cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles. "Vibrant city centers are not just good for the city, but the whole region," he said.

In Denton, Fregonese was hired about two years ago to develop a master plan for downtown and an open-space master plan for the whole city, said Larry Reichhart, Denton's assistant planning and development director. Denton paid Fregonese $ 200,000 including expenses for the projects.

Reichhart said Fregonese did a good job and delivered what he promised. "It worked out great," Reichhart said. "With any community, you're going to have different viewpoints on how it should evolve. John's really good at getting a united vision." Fregonese draws some of his expertise from his childhood. While growing up, he lived in Hollywood and in Rome with his Argentine father, Hugo, who was a movie director, and his actress mother, Faith Domergue. He said he became fascinated by the contrasts between the two cities, and how they developed.

He translated this fascination into a career, first as city planner and then as an urban planning consultant. Fregonese said Arlington is a good candidate for the effort because it has a major university, residential areas and decent infrastructure, and is a "pretty safe" place to live. He said getting the message out about the city's vision for downtown is vital. "The main thing you need to do, the one key is if developers know the city has a vision, they will be more willing to invest," he said. "Private investment follows public leadership."

He said he will be leading the steering committee to make its members' idea of the future for downtown happen. "We're not the kind of group that tells a city what to do, but we listen to what they want," Fregonese said. "We hopefully have the skills and knowledge to make that happen." Cluck said he feels confident that, with Fregonese's help, the city will be on the right track. "In the next 12 months, I think we'll see activity in downtown," he said.

 

ONLINE: www.ci.arlington.tx.us

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