Team Mission: To Find Parking in Ashland

Andrew speakingCPW’s Ashland Team Facilitates Parking Management Progress 

Visiting Ashland, Oregon is such a pleasure that on Wednesday, March 5 the Community Planning Workshop’s “Ashland’s Sustainable Transportation Team” embarked on their second expedition to that magical place of joy and unity. While there, the team embraced the spoils and character that Ashland’s downtown so aptly provides, including its illustrious pizza parlors, coffee shops, and a delightful stroll along the banks of Ashland Creek. Yet, the Ashland Team was visiting with purpose. The team was on a mission to find parking.

While the team was successful in finding parking that day, the primary mission is to assist the city in ensuring that all visitors, local residents, downtown employees, and business owners will have available and convenient parking throughout the year, particularly during the summer tourist season. Although the Ashland Team was not able to see Shakespeare’s The Tempest or Richard III on this trip, these plays and others draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in this town of 20,000 residents each year. Thus, the downtown parking situation in Ashland from June through September can be more of a midsummer night’s nightmare than a dream.

How will the Ashland Team help rectify this parking predicament? By guiding the Ashland Downtown Parking Management and Circulation project through several phases of research, culminating in the development of several policy packages. This process will be conducted collaboratively with the mayoral appointed Project Advisory Committee (PAC).

The PAC is composed of knowledgeable and dedicated Ashland city staff members and residents who won’t settle for just another set of planning options that will eventually collect dust on a shelf in the city’s archives. This group is committed to this project from planning through implementation phases for the benefit of Ashland’s downtown users. The Ashland Team’s role is to support the PAC’s decision making with in-depth research and analysis, and to escort the PAC through an organized, strategic, and publicly transparent policy development process.

And that brings us back to the Ashland Team’s second voyage to Oregon’s little city with big parking problems. On that day, the team came prepared to facilitate a meeting with the PAC, and facilitate they did! The meeting was highly productive as all participants came to the table ready to evaluate the findings from the project’s first Survey (which solicited an impressive near 800 responses) and discuss revisions to a draft of Guiding Principles compiled based on the survey results and other resources.

Team Ashland headed back to Eugene that night with important new insights. First, the PAC is composed of motivated and sophisticated individuals who care deeply about making a positive impact in their community. Second, with only a month between meetings the Team has a lot of work to do: composing a second survey, formalizing the Guiding Principles, planning an on-the-ground parking and bicycle monitoring effort, and beginning to craft the project’s policy alternatives.

Stay tuned next month for a report on our parking and bicycle monitoring effort!

Andrew Dutterer Ashland Sustainable Transportation CPW Community Planning WorkshopAbout the author: Andrew Dutterer is pursuing concurrent master’s degrees in Environmental Studies and Community & Regional Planning. At heart, Andrew is a trout and steelhead fishing bum who loves to spend time on any river, but he now realizes that parking is an interesting subject as well.

Meet CPW’s Research Assistant: Jacqueline Fuentes

Jacky Fuentes Connected Lane County Aspirations Project CPW Community Planning WorkshopAlias: Jacky

Where were you born and where do you call home? Born and raised in southern California and still consider it home.

What did you get for your birthday? Flowers, chocolate, Missouri frame, and study snacks. My birthday always falls during winter finals, so the fact that people take the time to give me presents in the midst of stressing is greatly appreciated.

In which graduate program are you enrolled?  I’m enrolled in the new Master’s program of Education in Counseling, Family, and Human Services (CFHS) with a specialization in Prevention Science.

What is your role with the Community Planning Workshop? I will be working with Jay Breslow and Jill Kornelis on the Connected Lane County Aspirations Project, exploring middle school student’s aspirations. During our middle school visits, I will take notes and help lead listening sessions. We’re hoping to learn more about middle school students’ aspirations and ways to improve current support systems to help them achieve them.

What are some of the project outcomes you hope to gain that will assist you professionally? I believe this job opportunity will help me learn about the importance of inclusion of key individuals when providing interventions. I’m excited because this is more of a bottom-up approach where we will be taking the time to ask students firsthand about their aspirations. I’m also looking forward to getting out into the community and visit various schools.

How does your involvement with the Community Planning Workshop relate to or inform your education? I am currently working with Dr. Ellen McWhirter on my capstone project that focuses on Latina/o high school students’ dropout intentions and college aspirations and have learned school related factors are important and need to be recognized when understanding students aspirations.

The Connected Lane County Aspirations Project overlaps with my current project and takes an additional step back to focus on middle school students. This is really neat and something I have not really seen done before. This type of approach can be considered as being an upstream approach and one that overlaps with prevention science.

What’s your favorite pig-out food? In-N-Out Burger

What advice would you give to your ‘younger’ self just beginning as a graduate student?  “Take it one day at a time and focus on the journey, not the destination.”