Positive response to Hot Springs Village master plan

An eight-day period of intensive community input on a comprehensive master plan for Hot Springs Village that ended Wednesday elicited a large amount of feedback, the HSV POA communications manager said Monday.

“The widespread interest in this project shows that the people of Hot Springs Village truly care about their community and its future,” Kate Chagnon said. “We’ve had more than 2,000 people participate in this process already in some fashion, and we will keep trying to engage our residents, nonresident owners, builders, developers and investors.

“We are grateful to Crafton Tull and DPZ (the firms chosen to design the plan) for their ability to successfully capture stakeholder feedback and translate it into development design.”

The primary focus of the charrette — an intense period of design and planning activity — was gathering feedback from property owners, staff and community leaders to be used in the development of goals and strategies for long and short-term planning, a release said.

Throughout the eight days, close to 1,000 residents, property owners, committee members and stakeholders attended public meetings, subcommittee meetings, webinars and open houses where they provided input that would become directives used by the design team.

The three primary strategies identified were protecting the long-term fiscal sustainability of the Village, establishing and preserving the natural character of the Village and evolving the experiences and housing offered to meet the changing needs of retirement and demographics.

“The directives that came out of the charrette, along with the existing enterprise goals, will prove vital in the development of additional strategies for growth,” Julie Luther Kelso, director of planning at Crafton Tull, said in the release.

Twenty-six percent of Hot Springs Village’s 34,000 originally platted residential lots have been built upon since inception. In order to financially support the current infrastructure, planners estimate that the Village will need to expand that number to between 50 and 66 per-

cent over the long-term.

“We are eager to include a variety of growth strategies as part of our long-term planning to ensure Hot Springs Village remains a healthy and sustainable community for years to come,” Chagnon said.

“We understand the importance of communicating the value of Hot Springs Village living to retirees, young families and single professionals. Among the ways to do that is to promote additional mixeduse development or more dense, ‘pocket’ communities surrounded by green space. We are exploring quite a few options for making our community even more attractive to property owners.”

She noted DPZ’s priority is to build real and diverse neighborhoods while preserving the natural environment.

“That’s one of the reasons we selected DPZ for this work. We want to ensure Hot Springs Village’s neighborhoods are walkable and that they include trees, common green space and nature trails. We’re proponents of natural landscape and open green spaces,” she said.

“As the nation’s largest gated community, we are fortunate to have enough room to grow and retain the natural character of Hot Springs Village. We are committed to always keeping some areas of Hot Springs Village pristine and undeveloped.”

The design team for the project includes planners, architects, landscape architects, engineers, and economists from Crafton Tull, DPZ CoDesign, Randall Gross Development Economics, RPPY Architects, East Harding Construction, and Great Destination Strategies.