Neighborhood Plan

We worked together with the Walnut Hill Community Association and 572 neighborhood stakeholders to create a comprehensive, resident-led plan for Walnut Hill. This planning process helps set our neighborhood revitalization agenda over the coming years.

The Walnut Hill neighborhood planning process began in early summer 2006, when the Walnut Hill Community Association (WHCA) Executive Committee began to work with TEC-CDC to create a planning grant proposal to the Wachovia Regional Foundation.  Throughout the summer, Executive Committee members and invited guests from the business and institutional communities shared their thoughts about Walnut Hill’s past, present, and future.  At the same time, TEC-CDC began an extensive visual survey and data analysis of existing conditions in Walnut Hill. With the support of the Wachovia Regional Foundation, the planning process was able to begin in earnest in mid-March 2007.  A steering committee of neighborhood stakeholders selected Kise Straw Kolodner as lead planning consultant and Lamar Wilson Associates as community facilitation consultant in May 2007.

In the first of four planning meetings, held on May 19, attendees discussed existing conditions, assets, and liabilities of Walnut Hill, and identified areas needing particular physical improvements.  In the June 23 planning meeting, attendees responded to Kise Straw Kolodner’s recommended solutions to neighborhood challenges in the built environment and identified their priorities.  Photo simulations of four priority projects were presented at the July 28 planning meeting, which also incorporated a discussion of residents’ suggested solutions to environmental, social, and educational challenges.  At the August 25 planning meeting, a draft of the neighborhood plan was presented, and residents’ feedback was incorporated into the final plan. The planning process’s commitment to resident-led action extended to the final approval process: instead of having TEC-CDC’s own Board of Directors approve the plan, the Walnut Hill Steering Committee unanimously approved the plan on September 11.

You can download our neighborhood plan by clicking here.

For more information about the neighborhood plan, please contact: