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The city of Alabaster is updating its comprehensive plan, entitled “Blueprint Alabaster,” and provided residents a chance to provide in-person feedback during a community kickoff meeting on Monday, March 18 at Alabaster City Hall. (Contributed)

Reporter photos/Noah Wortham)

By NOAH WORTHAM | Managing Editor

ALABASTER – The city of Alabaster is listening to feedback from residents on what they want to see from the city in the next 5-10 years as it works to form a new comprehensive plan.

The city of Alabaster is updating its new comprehensive plan, entitled “Blueprint Alabaster,” and provided residents a chance to provide in-person feedback during a community kickoff meeting on Monday, March 18 at Alabaster City Hall.

“Tonight’s a big hit, we’ve got a good turnout (and are) getting public input as to what our citizens want to their city look like,” Alabaster Mayor Scott Brakefield said. “It’s always important to get citizens input.”

The last time the city formed a comprehensive plan was in March of 2016 when it adopted the Alabaster Forward plan. Since then, the city has grown by seven percent, seen a one-cent sales tax increase and the completion of a new police department and park.

“We’ve just had a lot of things change over the past two to three years—a lot of progress made—so we just felt like it was time to come back,” Brakefield said. “It’ll be good to get feedback as to what are the next steps we want to take, what do we want our city to look like now that we’ve accomplished a lot of those goals in the last comprehensive plan.”

Alabaster is working with the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham for help on updating the city’s comprehensive plan which is intended to act as a blueprint to develop specific strategies and actions that will address issues regarding land use, future growth and development, transportation, housing and infrastructure and public services.

“It’s to get public input on what’s working, what’s not working and what is needed,” said Lindsay Puckett, principal planner for the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham.

The new comprehensive plan aims to identify citywide priorities and spending on projects and initiatives based on needs and public input. It also aims to guide future development, redevelopment and infrastructure decisions by elected officials, the planning commission and developers.

The commission will take the public’s feedback and utilize it in helping develop the comprehensive plan for approval as well as strategies for the city such as any key ordinances it should adopt.

The comprehensive plan development process typically takes 10-12 months and consists of the following four-phase process:

• Phase 1: community visioning and existing conditions
• Phase 2: plan development and recommendations
• Phase 3: Plan finalization and public comment period
• Phase 4: plan adoption

According to Puckett, there is a heavy emphasis on transportation and transportation improvements in the new comprehensive plan. The commission is working with Kimley-Horn and Associates as a subconsultant to assist in handling the transportation aspect of the plan which will focus on analyzing 8-10 intersections and corridors for possible improvements.

“Transportation is always going to be a big focus of what we want to do here (and) what we want to improve in the city,” Brakefield said.

Alabaster has completed phase one of improvements to Highway 119 with a second phase already approved and the city is in an agreement with the county to widen Interstate 65.

“We’re already taking steps to improve transportation in the community, but what we’ll get here is better feedback on the auxiliary roads (and) the smaller county roads,” Brakefield said.

The city is also working on the creation of an interconnected trail system between parks for its residents to take advantage of.

“Our goal is to have a walkable, bikeable trail system from Patriots Park to Veterans Park all throughout the city,” Brakefield said.

During the meeting, there were information boards that provided residents with current statistics in the city as well as multiple tables that provided a chance for attendees to note and highlights areas of their own concern in the city.

Alongside the public meeting, the regional planning commission is hosting a public survey for Alabaster residents to fill out online. Those that missed the public meeting can still submit their input on the city’s future by participating in the survey before it closes at the end of April. The survey is available online at Surveymonkey.com/r/BlueprintAlabaster.

“It’s exciting to get feedback from everybody to see what we can do to accomplish the goals of our citizens,” Brakefield said.

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