August 27, 2008 – The Mountain Landscapes Initiative “Toolbox” is ready for review.

After some eight months of community meetings, citizen interviews, and intensive design workshops, the just-completed draft is available for your perusal. Click here to download (26mb .pdf).

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“We are proud of the way so many people in our region got involved in this process,” says Vicki Greene, assistant director of the Southwestern Commission. “We’re continuing that collaboration by welcoming comments and corrections of our ‘Toolbox’ draft. When we publish the final version this fall, it will be something the whole region had a hand in.”

The Mountain Landscapes Initiative (MLI) is a long-range program by The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina. After some two years of research into mountain communities’ needs, The Community Foundation discovered that many were connected to land use planning. The “Toolbox” effort, an MLI pilot project, was launched in partnership with the Southwestern Commission, the regional Council of Governments organization serving county and town governments in the seven westernmost counties. The project’s purpose: To take a first big step towards community-determined standards for planning and development in North Carolina’s mountain region.

The “Toolbox,” with more than 250 pages of illustrations and explanations, is being created by the Charlotte-based Lawrence Group, which worked with some nine other design and engineering firms on the $400,000 project. Chapters in the “Toolbox” cover everything from the coordination of economic development with long-range planning to best practices for clearing home sites and for grading roads on a slope. It addresses farmland preservation, affordable housing, and green building techniques. And it provides state-of-the-art planning resources for elected officials, local government staffers, and citizen boards.

“It’s a made-in-the-mountains guide for how we want to grow into the future,” says Greene, project manager of the “Toolbox” pilot. Built into the pilot project is a Next Steps Fund to assist communities and non-profits with carrying “Toolbox” ideas forward.

For the complete background on the MLI effort and the “Toolbox” pilot, click on “Overview” section on the toolbar above and follow the process of work over the past months.

To submit questions, comments, or corrections to the “Toolbox” draft, click here.