North Grant Park Streeterville Curbside Management Study

Challenge:

Morreale was brought onto the North Grant Park Streeterville Curbside Management Study team to lead stakeholder engagement and communications. The study is a traffic demand management planning initiative focused on Chicago’s densely populated North Grant Park and Streeterville neighborhoods.

Solution:

At the start of the study, Morreale created a stakeholder engagement plan to serve as a framework for defining the methods and strategies to educate and engage stakeholders. A key component of the stakeholder engagement plan was the identification of neighborhood stakeholders and the establishment of a Community Advisory Group (CAG) consisting of civic organizations, residential groups, business organizations, neighborhood groups, and Technical Advisory Group (TAG) consisting of local and regional transportation and planning agencies. To supplement the CAG and TAG engagements, small group and one-on-one stakeholder interviews were held to fully understand the history, issues, and opportunities in the project area. These meetings were held with organizations such as Northwestern Hospital and the Mag Mile Association who provided insight on the traffic demands they observe everyday. Additionally, the team recognized the Streeterville Organization of Active Residents (SOAR) as an active and strong advocate for the neighborhood residents and created a partnership with the group to promote the study and gather data. Through the established partnership with SOAR, a survey was released to the neighborhood residents and was promoted at the SOAR sponsored farmer’s market in the neighborhood and through the group’s social media and newsletters. Other key promoters of the survey were the local aldermanic offices.

Result:

To ensure transparency and encourage active participation from the neighborhood residents, TAG, and CAG, a project website (https://www.chicagocurbmanagement.org/) was created as an information hub for the neighborhood residents to access pertinent project details, maps, surveys, events, and information about stakeholder engagement activities. Stakeholders and the public will continue to be engaged throughout the study which will ultimately inform policy changes that can lead to congestion relief, improved transit reliability, increased safety, positive economic impacts, and ease of navigation in the City of Chicago.