Prescott Rodeo Fairgrounds Master Plan Earns 60%-Plus Community Support; GH2 Architects Charts Phased Renovation, Bollard-Based Traffic Control

You Here Good afternoon today is new ** 接下來 ** Recording That jet like you Mayor good is excuse, but Mayor roozing is here. Thank you Mayor Pro Tem freeworth is joining us virtually and I see her in here, but I don't see her on camera. Mayor freeworth can you confirm that you can hear us and are present. I am here. Thank you. Councilwoman Fredrickson here. Councilman Gamboji. I am here. Councilman Garing. Here. Councilman Grady. Here. And Councilman Ruby. Here. All are present.

Our first item is presentation and discussion regarding the rodeo fairgrounds master plan project update. Good afternoon. Madam Mayor and Council, I have a GH2 Architects. I just want to say thank you for having us here today and really a part of this project. It's meant a lot to our team. My name is Robert Wadzack. I'm a Principal Architect with GH2 Architects in charge of our Arizona office. Kayla Audi, Principal with GH2 and our leader of our equine specialty practice.

So we really wanted to be here today to kind of give an overall presentation on the process we've been through for the rodeo fairgrounds master plan. Hopefully the click rule will work for me. The section looks like TV remodels. That's the right thing. You might need to just give it a minute because we have a virtual participant. There might be a little bit of a delay, but if you just click it, it'll go. Perfect. Okay.

Well, first thing we want to really talk through is kind of the project schedule we've had and where we've been. I'll keep going as we just talk as these come up, but we started this process with the city in October of last year. The final schedule goes through really September of this year.

What's not shown on this timeline is we've been meeting regularly with a steering community that was preformed and it consists of stakeholders from the rodeo, from the neighbors, from the U of A extension office, from the fair, from the Prescare farmers market and compost, and from the auto club that occupy the site. We've met with them monthly since that time in October, but we've also gone through several different stakeholder engagement sessions and community meetings that are shown here.

But that process really started with pre design where we met with that steering community to really establish the timeline and what this project need to look like. We moved into a visioning and a timeline in November where we started to meet with stakeholders and get feedback on really what the purpose of this was for the stakeholders involved.

In December, over the holidays, we really focused on site assessment, went through the site, toward the site, toward all the buildings, to really get a federal hold on really what the expectation was. As we moved into the new year, we had our first community engagement meeting in February. Before moving into really architectural visioning and master planning design development with the steering committee and with stakeholder groups.

We just had our second community meeting at the end of May, along with some exhibition at the farmers market. We have a real need. With guidance from the steering committee and stakeholders, we initiated the master planning process through the community engagement by gathering feedback through an initial community meeting and also through visioning sessions. And in those sessions, we were able to establish what the primary themes should be for the master plan goals.

There were eight of those visioning themes that were identified. They stemmed around infrastructure and facilities modernization, collaboration, coexistence and balanced use, environmental stewardship, anesthetics, site management, governance and leases, parking circulation and access, preservation of historic and cultural identity, community access and shared public space, and event management and noise control. I don't think I was doing anything. That's better. Okay.

So this slide was just recapping those visioning sessions. We then moved into site assessments in parallel. The design team completed an existing site assessment. This was a visual inventory to understand how existing facilities are utilized and improvements that would be desirable to consider as part of the master plan process. One thing GH2 is really big on really kind of ethos is stakeholder buy-in for these projects.

So we were very excited when we got involved with this that stakeholder meetings were a part of this community meeting. So I think one of the first things we did following our stakeholder engagement early in the process was to get a broader community involvement through an open house that we held at the center here where we really presented to your community kind of what this process was going to look like, what shape it was going to take.

In fact, the first master plan board we had there was the site with a big question mark on it. There was no predetermined notions from our team going into this. We needed to have that feedback. At that meeting we went through a survey that was available there for right in and we got over 194 responses from those that were there, you know, swimming from where you are, who you are. There was a right-in portion of that.

There was this question here just asking about the alignment with the visioning themes that we'd presented and come up with from those stakeholder engagement meetings. And from the public feedback, we were able to create just this word cloud. And I think the biggest takeaway we had from this was it was, you know, the theme from everybody was this is community asset. This is the rodeo. It needs to all stay here and preserve what's here.

Following those initial community meetings, we went through another round of stakeholder meetings where we really took the programming elements that we've heard and we're working with met with each stakeholder group to look at what the adjacencies for the site wants to look like. Where are those assets wanted to be and really get again more and more of that buy-in from the stakeholder group at large at what we wanted to see out of this process and out of your master plan.

This was really the beginning of our master planning process and design development. We had another meeting that was scheduled for community input in April, but because of feedback we got from this meeting meeting with the steering committee, we knew that we had probably too many options to present at that meeting. We were able to narrow that down with the group before we moved into the second community meeting actually that we held in June.

We were actually able to go out to the farmer's market to help promote that meeting, answer some questions informally at there, but then present to the community again at community meeting number two, really the process up to that point. We had the people from the steering committee, our members from the steering committee there, station to help explain kind of the process and the individual parts of what that meeting looked like.

We had over 174 responses both virtually and handwritten this time, and I think the takeaway that we wanted to share and continue to share with you all is that really over 60% of the folks that were online doing this and those meetings were doing this really felt strongly about the direction we were going with this master plan. The current draft master plan outlines a framework to serve as a road map for renovations and expansion strategies on site.

At the core of this is strengthening the rodeo's core operations. Traffic flow is also a key consideration to improve through strategically located removable barricades to control flow around the site, entry points to the site, and purpose specific parking areas in addition to having a shuttle drop off integrated. This also integrates community, agricultural and educational uses.

The heart of the master plan is the existing rodeo arena and grandstand complex that will remain to pay homage to the grounds historic routes. While the historical grandstands are no longer fully intact, remnants remain of where they originally emerged from the hillside. This area will feature enhanced restrooms with the current grandstands being in proximity for easy access and expansion.

On the west side of the grandstands, the existing mac and building and restrooms will remain those house several offices and event spaces for the Prescott Frontier Days team. Several other rodeo functions will remain with renovations planned, including to the Justin room that is a central medical lounge and first aid room for contestants as well as the announcer's booth.

The four existing building south of the grandstands will be preserved including dock party, preacher, Danny Freeman, and the former extension office, which is proposed to be renovated into a storage building in a future phase of the master plan. New additions include an equipment barn and covered facility to allow for portable arena and stalling to be set up to be able to support the rodeo and also to expand to serve as a host to livestock and horse show or other community events.

The design introduces multiple entry points and circulation paths to the site to allow for spectators or public traffic to flow in and separate of that to have contestants in livestock. In addition, routes for staff and emergency access and shuttle drop-off zones have been identified. rodeo contestants have designated gravel parking area for their trailers and several RV hookups.

While the city is preparing to re-line rodeo drive at Miller Valley Road, the contestants would be able to temporarily enter off Fair Street. One intersection becomes re-line contestants will have their own private entrance off of rodeo drive to be able to separate these uses. This area has been designed for the contestants to have easy access to the livestock pins, covered arena and RV hookups.

Not only will this enhance safety for contestants, but also allows for livestock and equine unloading and loading to happen in a secure area. The southwest area of the site provides an area to serve other stakeholders and the community. These feature positioned as a community hub, not just an event venue. These are accessible from Gail Gardnerway and Shimmer Drive and include a proposed two-storey University of Arizona cooperative extension and office building.

Demonstration gardens and hoop house for agricultural education, a public park space and landscaped areas, the farmers market and vendor areas with dedicated paved vendor stalls, and the existing community compost area. And then lastly, at the southeast corner of the site, there are two large areas that are available for additional parking or storage. These have been designated as a gravel lot for parking and then opportunity for site storage where currently city IT resides.

In addition, the master plan signals an intent to balance the built environment with environmental planning and open space. Environmental considerations are currently being discussed with the steering committee and in accordance with the city of Prescott staff. These may include additional bioswell barriers for stormwater management, floodplain considerations and defined setbacks for new construction.

Overall, the draft master plan positions the Prescott rodeo fairgrounds as of modernized, flexible venue, capable of hosting major events while serving the community year round and reinforcing the fairgrounds role in education, local agriculture and extension programming. While we're still in this slide, I want to point out that this was the actual master plan that we presented at the June meeting.

Following that June community meeting, we did have a stakeholder meeting where we heard from public works and environmental on some of the things they would like to see implemented in this plan. We meet next month with traffic along with the steering committee, so this plan is very much still taking shape. These are still very broad strokes and broad ideas that are presented in this plan. As you see it, it will continue to be massaged and adapted as we close out this project.

In our next steps, we are going to talk about our budgeting and cost estimating for what has been proposed. We're going to look at possible phasing for the different elements on the site. It doesn't all have to happen at once. We don't have to have everything built at the same time. There's ways to phase in the way we've set it up so that as funding becomes available from the different sources, that can be used to address those different those different items.

We're going to refine our circulation. We've always looked at major themes from the approach. We're going to talk about internal circulation and what that starts to look like, pedestrian circulation, and we're going to redefine some of the environmental considerations that are there. We also know that there is a very, very broad and active historical aspects to this site, so talking about how as this master plan is implemented, those archaeological aspects need to be taken into consideration.

We have upcoming presentation at the World's Audio, where we'll actually present the same presentation we had in June. Similar we did in the farmers market presentation we did have just to again raise community awareness, get additional feedback at that time, get the input from the broader community. We have planned an August community meeting that may be in flux with some of the changes coming due to the 60-day public comment period and planning a final council presentation in September.

And with that, we open it to questions. Madam Mayor, I have a question. Yes, Ted. There was a plethora of issues, but the three that I thought most important was traffic, parking, and sound. Do you have an idea what the traffic, parking, was, and what it would be? Yes, we go. I'll go back to that plan so we can talk about that kind of in detail.

When you traffic and access to the site was an issue from the get-go, it was a large contingent of feedback we got during stakeholder meetings that traffic and arrival was an issue, down-gale garner from Fairstreet. I think one of the moves we've talked about with this is the removal ballards, and that was probably the thing we have the most questions about at our first community meeting. Would you say that again? The removable ballards that we've proposed at Fairstreet.

The idea that we've, that we're putting here is that there would be removal ballards installed in Fairstreet. Similar to what you have around the courthouse. These ballards would be brought up at a determined time before major rodeo events and the rodeo, obviously in July, being the major event that these would likely be up for, but they would come up at a certain time. So you still have access through Fairstreet up until that dedicated time.

But as those ballards on Fairstreet come up, the idea is that all access to the site for, for spectators would actually come down Miller Drive to Fairstreet eliminating the access, the major access from Gale Garner, and allowing Gale Garner to stay an active thoroughfare for your community and neighbors that live in the area. Those ballards come down after the rodeo, possibly come up on Gale Garner to alleviate