White River Vision Plan Transition Team Submitted Written Briefs Activation/Economy Stakeholders

White River Vision Plan Transition Team Submitted Written Briefs Activation/Economy Stakeholders The White River Vision Plan Transition Team is appointed and charged with serving as the civic trust to create the regional governance implementation strategy for the White River Vision Plan. The White River Vision Plan Transition Team consists of balanced representatives from both Marion and Hamilton Counties with governance, organizational development, fundraising, and political experience. As part of the Team process, three sets of representative stakeholders, organized around the Vision Plan’s guiding principle groupings of environment, activation/economy, and regional/community/equity, are invited to submit written testimony to guide the Team’s discussions. Included in this packet are responses received from the activation & economy stakeholders. • Norman Burns, Conner Prairie • Ginger Davis, Hamilton County Soil & Water Conservation District • Patrick Flaherty, Indianapolis Arts Center • Greg Harger, Reconnecting to Our Waterways White River Committee • Amy Marisavljevic, Indiana DNR • Sarah Reed, City of Noblesville • Michael Strohl, Citizens Energy Group • Kenton Ward, Hamilton County Surveyor • Jonathan Wright, Newfields • Staff, Hamilton County Parks & Recreation Additional organizations were also invited to submit written briefs but opted not to respond. Response from Norman Burns Conner Prairie WRVP Transition Team: Regional Governance Model Questionnaire Please limit your response to four pages total. Responses will be public. Briefly describe your organization or interest, its relationship to the White River, and its primary geographic area of interest. Conner Prairie is a unique historic place that inspires curiosity and fosters learning by providing engaging and individualized experiences for everyone. Located on the White River in Hamilton County Indiana, the William Conner story, and the Indiana story, are intertwined and continues to be told and interpreted at Conner Prairie. As the world changes around them, museums all around the country are faced with a critical question: Can they reengage the younger generations to remain relevant, interesting, and even critical in our cultural and educational landscape? Conner Prairie last completed a Master Plan in 2006. In the ten plus years since the last Master Plan, Conner Prairie and the community surrounding its campus has changed by leaps and bounds. In 2017, the Conner Prairie Board of Directors commissioned a Master Plan to study the currently programmed areas of Conner Prairie, and for the first time ever, to comprehensively study the long term potential of Conner Prairie’s 1,046 acres located on both sides of the White River. Conner Prairie is uniquely positioned regionally as one of the largest remaining private landowners along the White River (3.3 miles). In addition, Conner Prairie continues to be one of the most successful and innovative living history museums and experiential sites in the country. Completed in May 2018, this new Site Master Plan (SMP) is guiding Conner Prairie’s development of the land and river for the next 20 years. This Plan includes a vision and organizing themes that directed the development of a series of 25 projects that is serving as a roadmap for future study and implementation. The vision for creating this master plan focused on the fact that Conner Prairie as a preeminent interactive history museum embracing the White River as a resource for its future success and growth. Conner Prairie’s 2018 Site Master Plan is organized around four project categories that identifies 25 individual projects that creates an overall planning framework. These projects include infrastructure in advance of future transformational projects, those that are experiential and programmatic, and others that will address our outward brand and image to the community. The four project categories are: 1) Advancement projects will address infrastructure like traffic ingress and egress off Allisonville and eventually River Road, improve and expand parking, storm water drainage, and create wetlands to help with flood plain drainage while educating about Prairie and river ecology. 2) Branding and image projects will change our gateway and entry sequence, address long-term traffic flow improvements, make improvements to the edges of our property along Allisonville, 146th Street and River Road, and address external and internal wayfinding. 3) Experiential and programmatic projects will repurpose and improve our current Welcome Center as a true Museum Experience Center; improve and expand current experience areas (Prairietown and more); improvements for expanded summer camp program with a larger and Response from Norman Burns Conner Prairie WRVP Transition Team: Regional Governance Model Questionnaire renovated building for camp, resident teacher program, and other applied learning activities like Prairie Preschool; activate the Oxbow for expended trails, environmental and river education opportunities, and Prairie and Lenape learning experiences; and preserve the south woods as a natural sanctuary with a nature center. 4) These projects all lead to transformational projects like Food, Farm, and Energy Experiences (FFEE) with Farm to Table Dining; White River Education Center; outdoor river excursions; wetlands; and trails and bridges that will connect program areas on both the east and west side of our property and allow guests to truly learn and engage with the White River. PLEASE SEE ATTACHED SMP MAP OF THE CONNER PRAIRIE SMP PROJECTS What do you see as the greatest challenges facing the White River in the next 30 years? I believe that the greatest challenges to the White River in the next 30 years will be awareness, politics, accessibility, connectivity, cleanliness, sustainability, and environmental impact. We need locals to better understand what we have in a unique and underutilized regional asset of 58 miles of river, and how it can be better used through development into an ecological wonder for education and connected recreational parklands and trails. It will take a unified brand and messaging for the sense of place that this will create for locals, while being a remarkable environmental, educational, and recreational attraction for tourism and business development. Governmental cooperation could be problematic because the WRVP has to partner across boundaries to collaboratively manage the White River system and to create an efficient operations and sustainable governance model that can be agreed upon by all jurisdictions. Consistent accessibility and connectivity will be problematic throughout the 58 mile stretch so it will be important to strategically acquire riverfront properties available for voluntary acquisition. We are blessed regionally with many Thankfully there are large connecting public parks and one large private landholder in Conner Prairie that has a master plan for its 1,046 acres of land and 3.3 miles of the White River that support the vision and guiding principles of the WRVP. Conner Prairie’s Site Master Plan is critical to both accessibility and connectivity between Fishers and Carmel. Continuing to cleaning up the river will help with both sustainability and its environmental impact down river all the way to the Gulf. This will be one of the critical issues to be addressed by any cross jurisdictional agency created to manage this process. What role or types of activities, funding, or decision-making abilities could a regional governance entity undertake to help address these challenges? Why? The first activity and perhaps the greatest challenge faced by any regional governance entity will be creating the unified brand and the appropriate messaging about how the WRVP will be implemented. A communications plan will be needed to convince citizens that public and private funds, and various public regulations will be needed to create an accessible, recreational and cultural environment that encourages a unique sense of place for locals. Response from Norman Burns Conner Prairie WRVP Transition Team: Regional Governance Model Questionnaire If this can be done then further steps to clean up the river will provide sustainability and improve environmental impact down river. The regional governance entity will need to identify natural area/transition locations and create a natural area conservation plan to manage recreational use at the edges of significant natural resource areas. This will include plans to remove invasive woody and herbaceous plants, plant native trees and shrubs, install native seed, and then manage and monitor along the river’s edge. Only a government entity that has cross jurisdictional support can then incentivize private investment in rain gardens, green roofs, permeable pavements, and rain barrels to capture and manage storm water that will reduce the impact on the river. An even greater role will be determining the capacity and design mechanism to both route and discharge flood water during major flood rain events. What role or types of activities, funding, or decision-making abilities would not be helpful for a regional governance entity to undertake? Why? I am concerned about the grant and funding mechanism needed by a regional governance model and how such a large public project might cannibalize and be a drain on other non-profit entities that receive funds from similar government agencies and private foundations. Currently thoughts are being given to raising new sources of funds using a new or reallocated

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