Press & News

Design Team Begins Planning a Great Street
Community Planning Team Wins Landmark Project -

(Kansas City, MO), - The City of Overland Park, KS, selected the team of Kansas City-based BWR and A. Nelessen Associates of Belle Mead, N.J., for the community visioning plan of the Metcalf Avenue corridor. The planning process is to create a community-based vision plan for a "Great Street" in the heart of Overland Park.

"All great cities have great streets," Tony Nelessen, project manager, said. "Our process focuses on the public and will tap the imagination and the creativity of Overland Park's citizens and business owners for a consensus vision of the 9-mile Metcalf Avenue corridor."

Matt Jordan, assistant city manager, said, "We selected the Nelessen/BWR team because of its profound commitment to community collaboration to better define and reinforce a coherent image for the corridor, one that will differentiate it as a series of great business districts and mixed-use neighborhoods, including downtown Overland Park."

"There has been extensive and exhaustive attention given to community collaboration and to the involvement of citizens at every level of community life," said David H. Westbrook, president, Corporate Communications Group Inc., who is heading up public outreach for the corridor study. "This is about engaging the community's voice to bring clarity and authenticity to what the Metcalf Corridor identity ought to be."

Communitywide workshops and charettes are being conducted. City staff, a technical advisory committee and a steering committee are engaged in the process. An online version of the “Visual Preference Survey” can be taken by anyone interested in the future of this key corridor—the “spine” of Overland Park—by logging on to the city’s web page, www.opkansas.org. By fall 2007, outcomes will be translated into a plan that will be visionary, yet realistic and doable, based on commercial and residential real estate marketplace reality, economic studies, demographic research, traffic analysis, infrastructure plans and legal review.

The BWR project team’s services include: land use planning; GIS mapping and 3-D imaging; and traffic and environmental engineering analysis and review.

About BWR

BWR is a multidiscipline firm offering comprehensive consulting services in architecture, engineering and planning. BWR has expanded to include 10 offices and more than 250 professionals nationwide. As part of the firm’s commitment to quality and innovation, they have assisted hundreds of clients throughout the United States in disciplines such as aviation services, environmental services, architecture and community planning.