Vestavia Hills, ALabama
Community Vision Plan
Though
relatively young, Vestavia Hills is a stellar community, boasting high per
capita income and extremely strong educational attainment rates; yet, in
today’s uncertain and hyper-competitive economic environment, there is no room
for complacency. Today’s successes are not guaranteed tomorrow. Vestavia Hills
must focus on the future to ensure long-term prosperity and economic
opportunities for all of its citizens.
The City
of Vestavia Hills has embraced the challenge of building off of its current strengths
to forge a prosperous future. Beginning in May, 2011, Market
Street Services will
facilitate a seven-month process that will result in a holistic and
transformational Community Vision Plan. The Vision Plan
will be driven by community input and ratified by a Steering Committee of
public, private, and non-profit leaders from various business and residential
districts within the City of Vestavia Hills.
Market Street Services will be working in cooperation with the Regional Planning
Commission of Greater Birmingham, which is conducting a US 31 Corridor
Development Plan, to consider the specific needs of the City’s historic retail
and business corridor, Highway 31.
Competitive Snapshot and Stakeholder Input
The Competitive
Snapshot will provide
Vestavia Hills with a thorough examination of its competitive advantages and existing challenges.
The City will be
benchmarked against
three quality peer communities (Germantown, TN; Peachtree City, GA; Matthews,
NC), the state of Alabama, and the
nation, and the “hard
facts” will be married
with input received on the
ground from those who
know Vestavia Hills the best.
Using a combination of
focus groups and individual
interviews, complemented
by an online community survey, Market Street will seek the input from the entire community.
Target
Business Review
The Target
Business Review will
build on the information gathered during Phase I and will present a short list
of possible target business sectors on which the City can focus its efforts.
The Target
Business Review will
consider the City’s niche opportunities within the regional targets developed
for the Birmingham metropolitan area as a component of the Blueprint Birmingham
process.
Community Vision Plan
The Community
Vision Plan represents
the culmination of all quantitative and qualitative research through the
development of action items geared toward addressing challenges and
capitalizing on opportunities for visionary growth. The Vision Plan will serve as a tool unifying
Vestavia Hills’ various community and economic development partners behind a
consensus blueprint for quality community and economic development. It will
provide goals and action steps needed to optimize local competitiveness and
conditions to achieve success.
Implementation Plan
One of Market
Street’s core beliefs
is that when the strategic planning process is complete, the real work begins.
Timely and effective implementation is critical to the ultimate success of
Vestavia Hills’ Community Vision Plan. The Implementation Plan will examine implementation partners, organizational
structures, budgets, and staffing, while also providing performance metrics to
measure the City’s success in implementing the Vision Plan. The Implementation Plan will enable local leaders to secure
early implementation victories and continue to build momentum for overall activation
of the Vision
Plan.