Council directs staff to finalize Garden Hills neighborhood action plan after study-session presentation

Planning staff presented a draft Garden Hills Strategic Neighborhood Action Plan at the Champaign City Council study session on April 22 and council members unanimously directed staff to finalize the document and pursue the next public-review steps.

Planning Manager Lacey Rainslow said the plan’s study-area boundary matches the tax-increment finance district boundary “so that over time, as goals and actions are identified, that perhaps the revenues from that TIF might be able to be used to complete those programs.” She told the council the plan bundles long-standing infrastructure needs, housing concerns and neighborhood programming into a single roadmap for action.

The draft responds to decades of attention to drainage and related infrastructure: Rainslow noted the neighborhood’s first drainage study was completed in 1982 and a more recent study in 2015 identified the Hedgerow Road site as the best location for stormwater basins. The city used a temporary engagement site, the Hedge Pop Park, on the larger Hedgerow site—described in staff remarks as more than 8 acres and roughly three-quarters of a mile long—to host outreach and youth…