The Mid-America Regional Council Board of Directors and Total Transportation Policy Committee approved the allocation of $1 million in grant funds to 13 projects that advance sustainable development in the region.
The Planning Sustainable Places (PSP) grant program builds on the work of the Mid-America Regional Council’s Creating Sustainable Places initiative and goals of the region’s long-range transportation plan, Transportation Outlook 2040, promoting sustainable concepts consistent with a centers-and-corridors strategy. MARC pooled $500,000 each from the Missouri and Kansas Surface Transportation Programs to support the competitive grant program.
The Creating Sustainable Places committee, which oversees the project selection process, received 27 applications for 2015–2016 PSP funds. Partial funding was approved for six projects in Kansas and seven in Missouri, with $487,000 in combined local matching funds.
The PSP awards include:
- Shawnee — Multimodal downtown connectivity plan, $91,741.
- Olathe— Connect Downtown Olathe, $91,741.
- Louisburg — Downtown complete-street/green-street plan, $75,660.
- Unified Government — Multimodal redevelopment plan, $68,805.
- Mission — Turkey Creek trail design, $69,570.
- Leawood — 135th Street community implementation plan, $64,983.
- North Kansas City — Burlington corridor complete-street design, $113,586.
- Independence — Truman and Winner roads commercial node, $37,986.
- Parkville and Riverside — Route 9 corridor study, $113,586.
- Kansas City, Missouri — Waldo streetscape, $31,586; Independence Avenue zoning overlay, $63,586; and Marlborough Village placemaking, $47,586.
- Platte City — Highway 92 Corridor Study, $54,586.
Eight of the selected projects build on work completed with funds awarded in the first round of PSP funding in 2013, and three projects that received awards from both rounds of PSP funding also recently received funds through other federal transportation programs.
“That’s one of the unique things about the Planning Sustainable Places program; it helps communities take the next steps beyond project planning,” said Beth Dawson, a senior land-use planner at MARC. “It uses a sequential funding process that can take sustainable projects from concept to design to implementation and construction.”