Unveiling the Vision
On November 18, 2009 the Mississippi River Renaissance Project hosted an event "A River Runs Through It: Unveiling the Vision for our Mississippi River".
After five months of collecting data from Mississippi River community members within Stearns and Benton County, a draft Vision was developed for the Mississippi River in Central Minnesota. This Vision was unveiled at the meeting. This event was a celebration of that milestone!
Developing a Vision is the first steps to unite and bring direction to all future decisions. Mr. Patrick Seeb, executive director of the St. Paul Riverfront Corporation shared their successes of turning a city once on it's heels into a vibrant River city and Mr. Matt Glaesman, community development director for the City of St. Cloud announced their future efforts to develop a first ever "Urban Area Mississippi River Plan".
The draft Vision is intended to be organic and elastic so that it can grow with the effort and allow change. Suggested revision to this draft are being accepted until December 1, 2009. A final Vision will be presented to Mississippi River community leaders in early 2010 for their formal adoption and support. These communities include the counties of Benton and Stearns, and the cities and townships along the river in these counties. This includes: Benton County, Stearns County, townships of Brockway, Langola, LeSauk, Sauk Rapids, and Watab, cities of St. Cloud, Sartell, Sauk Rapids, and Rice.
Please help support and embrace our Vision for the Mississippi River here in Central Minnesota!
Voyageur's Canoe Tour of the Mississippi River
Getting to know YOUR Mississippi River: Community values of the Mississippi
We see our communities reflected in the waters of the Mississippi. The communities' values about the Mississippi were brought into more clear focus this spring in a meeting that kicked off the river 'visioning' process. On July 29, 2009, local elected officials had the communities' values about the river reflected back to them as they viewed the river and it's adjacent habitats firsthand.
Voyageur's canoes, provided by Wilderness Inquiry, carried participants down the river where the following community values were discussed:
The River has natural beauty that offers a sense of place
The Mississippi River is an icon of Americana that flows through our communities
The River provides a great source of recreation
The Mississippi River and it's waters work for us, and
The River provides wildlife habitat
With guidance by John Bilotta, University of Minnesota Extension Service and Project NEMO coordinator, Kimberly Thielen Cremers, Eric Altena and Mark Hauck provided information and led discussions regarding the above community values. Representatives from Watab Twp., Sauk Rapids Twp., Brockway Twp., the City of St. Cloud, the City of Sartell, the City of Sauk Rapids, Benton and Sherburne SWCD, and staff from Stearns County Environmental Services were in attendance.
Creating a Shared Vision
On May 21, 2009 the Mississippi River Renaissance Project hosted an event "A River Runs Through It: Creating a Shared Vision for our Mississippi" This event began the process of collecting data from the local communities. The data collected will be utilized to create a vision in which all 14 communities can endorse. This meeting of interested individuals, residents and communities generated an initial list of values that were important to the communities along the river.
These values, along with other information collected from May-October 31, 2009, will be the foundation of a vision statement for this reach of the river. This vision statement will ideally set the framework on which all future goals and objectives will be based.
Overall, the vision is to act as an inspiration on "where we want to go", it's the framework for all future strategic planning. All our future goals and strategies will focus on making the vision a reality.