KEYPORT, N.J. – Keyport Business Alliance and the Borough of Keyport invite members of the community to attend a PLACE MAKING WORKSHOP at Keyport Borough Hall, 70 W Front Street at 10 am,

on Saturday, June 5th. What is a PLACE MAKING WORKSHOP? “It’s a meeting where you make your street, your neighborhood, your waterfront, your town, your—you name it—better,” said Keyport Councilmen Joseph Wedick and John Doyle. The PLACE MAKING WORKSHOP is an open forum, where issues of how to build public spaces that work for everyone are pinpointed and defined, then translated into ideas for improvements. The central component of the workshop is the Place Performance Evaluation Game. The game starts from the assumption that the people in the community are the best qualified to analyze a place and envision how it could be made better. The game then uses various devices to ask people to articulate their needs and vision. “If you have ever been concerned about the waterfront, downtown or traffic congestion, this workshop is the place you should be on June 5,” said Mayor John Merla.

The PLACE MAKING WORKSHOP is the key community input portion of the Smart Growth Planning Grant awarded to Keyport in 2003 and is the public's opportunity to participate in the visioning process that will create the revitalization plan to be adopted by the community and the Borough of Keyport. This plan will facilitate revitalization of the waterfront and downtown areas using NJ Smart Growth planning principles. The community will develop new design standards, park and open space improvements, downtown circulation and parking recommendations, a market study for downtown real estate, and recommended modifications to zoning and land use regulations.

After a competitive bidding process and with the approval and assistance of the NJ Office of Smart Growth, Keyport hired the planning team Phillips, Preiss, Shapiro Associates, and Project for Public Spaces to undertake the Smart Growth planning process for the Borough. The Keyport governing body then solicited for community volunteers to guide the process, and 71 residents and business leaders signed on to be part of four Topical Committees (Residential, Business, Waterfront, and Transportation) and a Steering Committee. These Committees work on planning and visioning tasks to complete the Smart Growth process in cooperation with the professional firms.

The PLACE MAKING WORKSHOP will be conducted by Project for Public Spaces (PPS), a New York City based urban planning non-profit. “We’re very fortunate to have a world-class organization like Project for Public Spaces involved to help Keyport with this,” said Terry Burns, Keyport resident and Co-Chair of the Business Committee.

“They’ve helped over 1000 communities in the US and around the world with similar projects to improve parks, streets, transportation centers and public spaces.”

Keyport community leaders expect the output of the PLACE MAKING WORKSHOP to have far-reaching effects. “The changes that will begin to improve American Legion Drive with the bulkhead replacement this fall will have a larger impact on a variety of issues that have been on Keyport’s plate for many years.” said Jeffrey Fink, President of Keyport Business Alliance. A vision plan that includes parking, circulation, pedestrian traffic claming, design standards, land use regulation recommendations are the keys to seeking public funding and attracting private reinvestment to implement the improvements Keyport has sought for so many years. By combining these planning and visioning steps into a pro-pedestrian open space and well-designed traffic calming plan will make Keyport's downtown and waterfront safer and more pleasant places to live, work and play. “The PLACE MAKING WORKSHOP on Saturday, June 5 is an opportunity for everyone in Keyport to look at these issues and opportunities and participate in the decision making process for what to do about it,” said Mayor John Merla.

Project for Public Spaces (www.pps.org) has an international reputation for its work on the design and management of public spaces. A non-profit, PPS was founded in 1975 to continue the pioneering work of writer-sociologist William H. Whyte. PPS has helped of 1,000 communities in 44 states and 12 countries improve their parks, markets, streets, transit stations, libraries and countless other public spaces. PPS strives to create places where the public feels comfortable, and by extension, where the community has a chance to interact. PPS staff are trained in environmental design and psychology, architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture.

Phillips, Preiss, Shapiro Associates is a full-service planning firm with offices in Manhattan and Red Bank, N.J. The firm is unique in that while it’s origins are as a land use consultancy, it has over the years come to specialize in real estate market and feasibility studies, often for unusual sites and uses that do not lend themselves to cookie-cutter analyses and simple rules if thumb. The firm brings several specific areas of experience to Keyport: redevelopment area studies, market studies, master planning and zoning.

WHAT: PLACE MAKING WORKSHOP
WHEN: Saturday, June 5 10 am until 2 pm (box lunch will be provided)
WHERE: Keyport Borough Hall, 70 W Front Street (Council Chambers)
WHO: All members of the Keyport Community

For more information contact Kathaleen Shaw 732-739-0690
or Dave Palamara 732-739-5122