Keene Comprehensive Master Plan Project (2024)

Future iQ / Keene Comprehensive Master Plan Project (2024)

Keene Comprehensive Master Plan Project (2024)

Comprehensive planning for the City of Keene, New Hampshire

Project Overview

The City of Keene is a community of 23,437 residents located in the southwestern corner of New Hampshire near the borders of Vermont and Massachusetts. The City serves as the county seat and economic and cultural hub for the predominantly rural Monadnock Region. Keene is also home to three higher education institutions, nonprofit and human services organizations,
and the region’s major hospital.

The City of Keene has embarked on a visioning and planning project that will update the City’s 2010 Comprehensive Master Plan (CMP). This update will be done in two phases, beginning with a renewal of Keene’s Community Vision. Public involvement and input will be a critical component of this phase, with a focus on neighborhood engagement throughout the City and strategic visioning around the future of Keene’s downtown and growth areas/nodes. In the second phase, each of the 2010 CMP’s multiple topic-oriented chapters will be examined and updated to reflect current community priorities. Throughout the process, citizens and community partners will be asked to join with the City to identify priorities and establish a list of goals and action steps for implementation. This input will inform the development of an actionable implementation section that will outline and prioritize strategies for achieving the Plan’s updated goals and objectives.

Future iQ, in partnership with WGI and Jon Stover and Associates (JS&A) have been contracted to develop the Comprehensive Master Plan over an 18-month period. The process will result in an updated Community Vision, Community Snapshot, and Comprehensive Master Plan that will guide the community’s decision-making for the next ten to fifteen years.

Future iQ^®'s Role in this Project

Phase 1: Community Vision and Community Snapshot

Significant background research and data-collection will occur to produce a Community Snapshot Report that will be used as reference throughout the visioning and planning process.
Public engagement and outreach will be foundational elements of this project. The project team will engage community members and stakeholders with initial interviews, surveys, a scenario-planning Think-Tank, and Focus Groups.
Future iQ, WGI, and JS&A will meet with City staff on a weekly basis. The project team will also meet with the Steering Committee and Technical Advisory Committee on a monthly basis for the duration of the project.
Future iQ is producing a project portal/website which will be the go-to place to sign up for project events, learn of project updates, interact with survey data visualization, and read reports.
The final deliverables for this phase will be the production of Community Snapshot Report, a Think-Tank Report, and a Strategic Community Vision Report that will articulate an updated community vision for Keene.

Phase 2: Comprehensive Master Plan (CMP) and Future Land Use Map

Public engagement and outreach will continue to be a focus of this planning project. For phase two, the project team will engage community members through the project portal/website, a Comprehensive Plan Survey, Focus Groups, a public Open House, discussion boards, and a Future Summit.
Future iQ, WGI, and JS&A will continue to meet with City staff on a weekly basis. The project team will continue to meet with the Steering Committee and Technical Advisory Committee on a monthly basis.
Task Force Groups will be created to develop the chapters of the CMP. The project team will facilitate regular meetings to develop the draft chapters and recommendations.
To visualize the CMP, the project team will create StoryMap(s), and the Future Land Use Map.
The final deliverables for this phase will be the production of a summary report of public input on the CMP elements, the Future Land Use Map, StoryMap(s), an Implementation Matrix, and the Comprehensive Master Plan Report.