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Raytown presents "Raytown on the Rise 2040" comprehensive plan after year-and-a-half outreach
Summary
City planners summarized the new 198-page comprehensive plan, emphasizing downtown revitalization, housing preservation, mobility improvements and an implementation matrix of short-, mid- and long-term actions; the Board was asked to use the plan as a regular reference for future development decisions.
City planners on Tuesday presented "Raytown on the Rise 2040," a comprehensive plan developed over roughly 18 months with steering‑committee input, focus groups, open houses and a community survey.
Planner Josh Bloom told the Board the plan is organized into pillars — economic development, housing and neighborhoods, mobility, infrastructure and land use, parks and recreation, and operational excellence — and is intended as a 10‑to‑20‑year roadmap that remains adaptable to changing circumstances. Bloom said staff conducted about 100 interviews, two community open houses (about 120 attendees total) and received roughly 260 survey responses to shape recommendations.
The presentation highlighted opportunities to revitalize downtown — including a proposed green space design and mixed‑use concepts developed with an Urban Land Institute team — and to better connect the Rock Island Trail to downtown to support economic activity. In housing, the plan identifies actions to help homeowners repair and rehabilitate aging mid‑century houses and to address rental housing maintenance. On mobility, it prioritizes sidewalk connectivity and bicycle network improvements and maps crash hot spots and sidewalk gaps near schools.
Bloom described the plan—s implementation matrix, which assigns short‑, mid‑ and long‑term timeframes and potential partners to each strategy, and recommended mixing "easy wins" across the six pillars so that small actions reinforce broader goals. He said the Planning Commission adopted the updated plan in August "according to state statute." Bloom and his team offered to provide a map package and follow‑up materials to aldermen and staff for implementation oversight.
The mayor and several aldermen thanked staff for the work; board members were encouraged to refer proposals to the plan when evaluating new development or policy decisions. The presentation closed with staff noting the plan is a guiding document, not a binding zoning change, and that further project‑level approvals would follow separate review processes.
The Board did not take a formal vote on the plan at the meeting; staff said the plan will be used regularly by both the Planning Commission and city departments going forward.
