Rotary Rounds April 19, 2017
Wally Cole gave the invocation and Mike Wollan led us in song. We had no guests, visiting Rotarians or student guests, but Mitzie Moe was inducted into the club as our newest member. President Katie gave a wonderful PowerPoint presentation on what Rotary and our club are about and presented Mitzie with a new member packet, her badge, The Four Way Test desk tent and a certificate of membership. Welcome Mitzi! After that all in attendance assembled for a group picture. President Katie reported that Scott DeBrito had agreed to represent the club at the upcoming Dollars for Scholars presentation.
Wally Cole gave the invocation and Mike Wollan led us in song. We had no guests, visiting Rotarians or student guests, but Mitzie Moe was inducted into the club as our newest member. President Katie gave a wonderful PowerPoint presentation on what Rotary and our club are about and presented Mitzie with a new member packet, her badge, The Four Way Test desk tent and a certificate of membership. Welcome Mitzi! After that all in attendance assembled for a group picture. President Katie reported that Scott DeBrito had agreed to represent the club at the upcoming Dollars for Scholars presentation.
In the brag and fine segment, this writer told of visiting Representative Bud Nornes and Senator Bill Ingebrigsten at the Capital for Habitat on the Hill Day to advocate for funding of affordable housing programs in the state budget. Jamie Larson has been busy relocating his office and missed a few meetings, putting in some money for that. Bob Russell acknowledged Katie Johnson for her efforts in putting together the new member presentation. Lori Larson reported 16 people have signed up for the Rotary membership planning session at Mabel Murphy's on May 1. Dave Johnson reported that he had enough people sign-up to do road clean-up right after our meeting. Randy Kempfer said he enjoyed visiting the kindergarten classes and reading Josh the Otter (pictures from the project are posted on our Facebook site). Katie Johnson talked about the Community Heath Expo at the Bigwood Event Center that has now come and gone. Mike Wollan reported that Paul Beithon is back in Fergus Falls recovering nicely.
For our program, Pete Wasberg introduced Amy Baldwin who is a UND graduate, with a Masters from Hamline. She spent ten years with the city of Brooklyn Park in various positions before returning to Fergus Falls.
Amy presented the Master Plan for the Downtown and Riverfront. It includes an area along the river from Tower Road to Mount Faith Bridge and is divided into three areas or “reaches”. There is a West River Reach, a Downtown Reach and an East River Reach. The reaches will be prioritized with the Downtown reach being the first priority and the East Reach being 15-20 years in the future.
Nine firms responded to the city’s request for proposals and the firm of HKGI based out of Minneapolis was selected. The development will unfold in seven phases with the first phase being Visioning where the city has held a number of listening sessions. The city started the process last fall by convening an Advisory Committee in October 2016. This was followed by a Recreation round table in January of 2017 as well as an open house. Three possible versions of the future development were displayed at City Hall on 29 March to gather feedback from the public.
Goals of the Downtown River Reach are to enhance the present Riverwalk, create dining and entertainment spaces, gathering spaces, and a possible place for the farmers market. Amy stressed that they were at the vision stage right now.
Anyone interested in more specifics or wants to review the various proposals can go to the project's website at the following address: http://www.hkgi.com/projects/FergusFallsDowntown.