The Mission Waterfront Revitalization Initiative seeks to revitalizing 296 acres of waterfront lands that have significant redevelopment potential for a mix of residential, commercial, institutional and industrial uses. Over the past decade, numerous technical studies, market analysis, and planning efforts were undertaken to identify the area's opportunities and constraints for redevelopment. With this work, key development principles and visual representations have advanced the commitment towards revitalizing Mission's waterfront.
To aid in this endeavor, the City of Mission's Economic Development Department created a Special Purpose Website. The website encourages community participation at a number of different level ranging from watching videos, conducting surveys, answering questions, soliciting feedback, providing progress reports, and monitoring the levels of community engagement.
The Special Purpose Website also provides an easy way to manage the records of the public engagement process. The website may be viewed at: https://engage.mission.ca/admin/projects/waterfront
The Mission Waterfront Revitalization Initiative has been in the making for over 30 years. The lands are the last and largest underdeveloped urban Fraser River waterfront in the Lower Mainland. The three-phase land use planning process had to find a means to circumvent the restrictions COVID imposed on public participation. A Special Purpose Website was deemed to be the best approach.
The website allowed the dissemination of information, tracking participation, managing the record keeping, and a more robust variety of communication venues.
Cost saving were realized by reducing travel costs of the consulting team by utilizing on-line activities.
Unlike on-line messaging boards, the website encourage thoughtful dialogue rather than impulsive reactions.
Land is one of the three legs to the stool of economic development. The others being labour and capital. Without a means to reach out to the community, the economic development of the community would be delayed. Our land use plan balances residential, commercial and industrial lands. A broader target audience can be reached by employing Web based communications.
The implementation of a Special Purpose Website is replicable, and both the format and lessons learned, are transferable to other projects.
Over the short few months since the website's launch, evolving technologies have flattened the learning curve for both website hosts and participants.
A key ingredient is using web based marketing is to keep the presentations fresh, acknowledge the feedback received, and spark interest by promoting upcoming events.