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Consultants brief Converse commission on draft comprehensive-plan findings, engagement and resilience work
Summary
Freese & Nichols updated the Converse Planning & Zoning Commission on the comprehensive-plan timeline, preliminary findings (projected +5,000 residents by 2040; 36% home-price growth since 2020), engagement metrics and a resilience exercise; a public land-use workshop is scheduled Jan. 25, 2025.
Consultants from Freese & Nichols briefed the Converse Planning & Zoning Commission on Nov. 18 about the city's comprehensive plan, presenting early findings, engagement results and a short resilience exercise ahead of a land-use workshop scheduled for Jan. 25, 2025.
The consultant summarized what the draft "snapshot" chapter and engagement work are showing: Converse is projected to add approximately 5,000 residents by 2040 (citing Texas Water Development Board numbers); the city has seen a roughly 36% increase in home prices between 2020 and 2024; only about 3 square miles of vacant, undeveloped land remain in the city; and about 75% of workers who live in Converse commute outside the city for work. Consultants reported 61 contributions to an interactive map and 180 survey responses after the survey stayed open longer than planned.
The presentation distilled five initial themes emerging from public input: traffic and infrastructure, sidewalks and safety, retail and amenities, road conditions and community safety/accessibility — with transportation and mobility repeatedly identified as priorities. The consultant also described draft community vision statements and how those will translate into goals, strategies and draft chapters.
Consultants introduced resilience concepts and led commissioners through a brief quadrant exercise to identify high-likelihood, high-impact threats for Converse; commissioners raised drought/heat, grid failures, train derailments and brush fires as local concerns and discussed emergency-response implications for schools and neighborhood reunification points.
The consultants previewed a land-use workshop on Jan. 25, 2025 (1-4 p.m., Converse Community Center) that will use interactive exercises to build growth scenarios and surface trade-offs between services, density and taxes. Commissioners suggested additional outreach to broaden participation, including intercept booths at Walmart, QR codes in local-business windows, flyers in churches and involving homeowner associations.
