Shreveport Common Vision Plan Process
The Shreveport Common Vision Plan community process, a Shreveport Regional Arts Council (SRAC) project made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, began with a year-long, strategic yet grass-roots, community listening process. Gregory Free, Designer and Historic Preservation Specialist, (Gregory Free & Assoc., Austin, TX) with community liaison Wendy Benscoter (Benscoter Consultants), assimilated and processed over 1,000 ideas, suggestions, concerns and strategies for the historic yet long-blighted urban area. A 50-member, Mayor-appointed Shreveport Common Advisory Committee of stakeholders, neighbors, area businesses, property owners, non-profit organizations and artists provided oversight to the community process. Free led a design team of architects and planners working with the community to create the Shreveport Common Vision Plan for an UNCOMMON creative cultural community. The nationally featured Creative Placemaking process (M.I.T. Dept. of Urban Planning, Places in the Making), and resulting Vision Plan is based on the community’s tenets for revitalization of the area: Authentic (true to history, place, character), Creative (stimulating, vibrant, diverse) Sustainable (environmentally, socially, economically) and for Community (inclusive, hospitable, tolerant) with no displacement of the current neighbors.
The Shreveport Common Vision Plan was approved by the community, Shreveport City Council, Caddo Parish Commission and the Metropolitan Planning Commission as a strategy of the 2030 Great Expectation Master Plan to increase arts and culture in the area as the catalyst for revitalization.
At the time the Vision Plan was published in 2011 (click the link below), the following video was produced to help the community IMAGINE…
Download the Vision Plan here!
From Vision Plan to Strategies to Implementation
In 2012, nine Community-Expert Task Forces were formed to research and recommend policy and strategies for advancing the Vision Plan to its promise. Over 9-months, their work informed a $100 million Portfolio of Projects for public and private revitalization based on economic, cultural and community development rooted in Authenticity, Creativity, Sustainability and Community with No Displacement: Unique Redevelopment of endangered buildings and blighted spaces to create Market-Value and Artist Affordable Live/Work Spaces, Makerspaces, Marketplaces, Community Greenspaces, Public Art, Transportation, Keeping the Neighbors including the area’s Social Service Organizations Integral to the new cultural district and Communication.
Today, over 30 public/private partners including property owners, developers, Shreveport Regional Arts Council and Artists, City of Shreveport, Shreveport Common, Inc., Caddo Parish Commission, State of Louisiana, Downtown Development Authority, private donors, nonprofit organizations, foundations, community groups, business owners and neighbors, together, have invested over $51,000,000 in the area. After decades of blight, construction is complete on 26 properties in the 9-block area, nine are under construction. Twelve properties are in pre-development. Last year, over 300 events in 13 venues resulted in over 800 days of programming, most free or affordable. Additionally, SRAC’s Pay It Forward program offers artists and arts organizations the opportunity for venue space in return for same value professional services that provide access to those living in affordable housing and homeless to home residences. There are over 16 public art installations in the 9-block area.
