Planning Process

Our NY Forward planning process started in May and will continue through Fall 2023 with the completion of the Strategic Investment Plan (SIP): 

1. Downtown Profile: The consultant team will prepare an analysis of downtown’s key characteristics, strengths, opportunities, and challenges.

2. Vision, Goals, Strategies: The public and LPC will provide feedback on these guiding elements for the future of our downtown. 

3. Project Identification and Development: An Open Call for Projects will ask project sponsors to submit detailed information for the consultant team and LPC to review. Projects should be large enough to be transformative and/or catalytic for downtown, and should leverage other private or public funding sources. The consultant team will evaluate proposals, provide support as needed to strengthen them, and present findings to the LPC for consideration. 

4. Project Profiles: The consultant team will create project profiles that describe key aspects of potential projects and are the core element of the SIP.

5. Strategic Investment Plan: The SIP will include a list of projects recommended by the Local Planning Committee (LPC) for NY Forward funding. This list should total $6-8 million in requested NY Forward funding. The completion of this document concludes the planning process.

6. Project Selection and Implementation: Following the submission of the SIP to the State, a multi-agency State team will review each project recommended for NY Forward funding. A subset of the projects recommended in the SIP will be awarded a total of $4.5 million by the State for project implementation. These projects will be expected to start within two years of the funding award.