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Metro planning staff outlines Imagine East Bank vision plan and key implementation priorities
Summary
Anna Grider of Metro Planning summarized the Imagine East Bank vision plan, highlighting four priorities—equity and affordability, mobility, resiliency, and neighborhoods—and describing 21 months of public engagement, form-based 'design zoning, and implementation work including utility planning and engineering teams.
Anna Grider, a planner with Metro's planning department, presented a high-level overview of the Imagine East Bank vision plan, which the presentation described as a 21-month public-engagement and technical-analysis effort adopted in 2022. Grider said the plan centers on four community-established priorities: equity and affordability, mobility, resiliency and flood management, and building neighborhoods.
Grider told the authority the vision plan provides guidance for design-based, form-oriented zoning and for public- and private-investment decisions; it is not detailed engineering or a financing plan. She said the plan informed an expansion of the downtown code for the first 30 acres of Metro-owned land and will guide future rezoning and infrastructure design.
On mobility, Grider said the plan maps a multimodal network emphasizing pedestrians, transit riders and cyclists and identifies the East Bank Boulevard as the primary north-south street, including dedicated bus rapid transit and protected bike lanes. For resiliency and river access, she described a two-pronged strategy: "make room for the river" by softening and laying back river banks and create district-scale stormwater management so multiple parcels can drain to shared, larger public spaces.
Grider identified a series of engineering and program partners already working on implementation: HDR was hired as program manager in 2023; Metro Water and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have collaborated on flood modeling; Kimberly Horn provided a utility master plan and 30% design for central waterfront infrastructure; Sherwood Design Engineers worked on flood resiliency and stormwater analysis. She said additional detailed design and right-of-way work will be required to deliver the street network and greenways.
Grider said the plan divides the East Bank into four neighborhoods and identifies priorities for the 130 acres of Metro-owned land, 30 of which were the subject of a separate master development agreement process. She noted the plan sets phase-1 benchmarks for housing affordability on Metro-owned parcels and that negotiated affordability terms could vary in later phases.
Board members asked detailed questions about how recent private development (for example, River North and the Oracle campus) fits the vision, about parking under form-based zoning (Grider said the downtown code currently requires zero parking but commercial and residential projects often include parking based on market demand), and about engineered flood mitigation tied to public space design.
Grider said the vision plan is an implementation-focused guide and that the work will take years and coordination across agencies, engineers and private developers.
