NextSteps for Downtown®: Comprehensive Planning Toolkit

Does your community need fresh ideas to jumpstart downtown redevelopment? Are you looking for both short- and long-term strategies that can effect real change? NextSteps for Downtown® is a Giffels Webster service that offers communities an opportunity to invigorate their downtown districts.

Through NextSteps for Downtown, our experts provide a pathway to ideas and solutions for key community stakeholders. We will conduct an intensive assessment that includes a walking tour of the downtown environment and hold informal conversations with various stakeholders. Our downtown professionals will review multiple areas that are often overlooked for improvement and assess how they impact the quality of downtown. Key considerations taken into account through the NextSteps for Downtown process include signage, buildings, parking, circulation, streetscape and overall land use.

NextSteps for Downtown delivers a comprehensive toolkit highlighting:

  1. Downtown strengths and opportunities (what’s working and what needs work)
  2. Action items to enhance downtown (the “NextSteps”)
  3. Best practices (what is working in comparable successful downtowns)

The toolkit is delivered in an interactive format with hyperlinks and fillable implementation worksheets that will continue the “NextSteps” momentum. With this toolkit, community stakeholders can then set priorities, assign champions for each element and start working towards successful implementation.