Regional Stakeholders Discuss Future of Regional Land Use Partnership

Seventy-seven regional stakeholders, elected officials, planning commissioners and planning directors met at the Regional Land Use Partnership Summit at the U.K. Hilary J. Boone Center on December 5 and the take-away was a myriad of strategies and action items to begin to develop a strategic plan for the partnership focusing on communication and collaboration between cities, counties, agencies and organizations.

A Vision Statement for the Plan was also thoroughly vetted at the summit and will be released early in 2020.

The Regional Land Use Partnership (RLUP) which was organized and is managed by a collaboration through Bluegrass Tomorrow, the Bluegrass Area Development District, the Bluegrass Land Conservancy, Fayette Alliance, Woodford Forward and Farm Bureau, has created great momentum in a the form of a mutually agreed upon resolution, which contains land use principles of agreement, and has been passed by LFUCG, Bourbon County Fiscal Court, the Lexington/Jessamine Metropolitan Planning Organization, the City of Midway, the Scott County Planning Commission, and a myriad of others in the works.

The Strategic Plan will be discussed, vetted and drafted by the RLUP committee in the first quarter of 2020.

Mary Berry founder and CEO of the Berry Center, and daughter of Wendell Berry, was the keynote speaker, and focused on advocating for farmers, land-conserving communities, and healthy regional economies.  A series of TED talks on Advocacy, Food, Growth and Housing featured David Tomes developer of the Norton Commons, Ashton Potter Wright of Bluegrass Farm to Table and Brittany Rothemeier of the Fayette Alliance.

Local, State and National Perspectives on land use planning were provide by Billy Van Pelt of American Farmland Trust, Tom Hutchenson from Atalo Holdings on the hemp industry, and Chris Woodall of LFUCG Division of Planning.