SLP Vision 4.0 Summary

Every 10 years, the City of St. Louis Park reviews and updates the strategic priorities that staff and elected officials use to guide planning and decision-making over the next decade. The Vision 4.0 final report will be presented to the City Council on Monday, 12/8. You can view the report here, starting on page 36. Congrats to SLP on completing this ambitious and important project.

Here is my summary and commentary on Vision 4.0: Leading with Love: A Vision of Connection for St. Louis Park 4.0.

Process and Respondents

St. Louis Park voices shaped Vision 4.0 through mobile pop-ups, community

conversations, and a survey, resulting in both quantitative and qualitative data. Impressively, this approach reached over 2,000 community members; more than double the amount of the previous Vision process. Demographic data is available for 729 individuals: 633 survey respondents + 96 conversation attendees. A few things stuck out to me when reviewing the respondent demographics.

Eighty-three percent of respondents were female (585 people), and only 5% were male (36 people) (Table 4). This is not necessarily unexpected, as many sources find that women are more likely to respond to surveys than men are. How does this gender imbalance influence the findings of this study?

Representation by neighborhood was also uneven. Table 5: Representation by Neighborhood (Survey Only, N=633) shows that about half of respondents, 312 (49.3%), were from high representation neighborhoods. Two hundred and eighteen (34.4%) are from medium representation neighborhoods, and 61 (9.6%) are from lower representation neighborhoods. The Fern Hill neighborhood had the highest representation among survey respondents. Texa-Tonka, Lenox, and Aquila also showed strong participation rates in the survey and conversations combined.

Data-Driven Policy Recommendations

The community’s vision is organized into five themes: Safety, Infrastructure, Sustainability, Community & Belonging, and Housing & Affordability.

Theme 1: Safety Creating a community where all people are and feel safe.

Selected Directional Recommendations:

• Recommendation 2 (Dynamic): Continuously adapt and expand the city’s public safety model to include and appropriately fund non-officer responses for mental health, social service, and non-emergency calls. This ensures the right response is sent to the right situation regardless of demographic.

• Recommendation 4 (Dynamic): Prioritize the ongoing investment in “safe infrastructure” by systemically implementing traffic calming measures, protected bike lanes, and pedestrian-first street designs identified in the “Infrastructure” goal.

Theme 2: Infrastructure Building and maintaining a connected, reliable, and people-first public realm.

Selected Directional Recommendations:

• Recommendation 2 (Dynamic): Accelerate the implementation of the city’s existing bicycle and pedestrian network plans, focusing on creating fully connected and protected networks that are safe for users of all ages and abilities, rather than disconnected segments.

• Recommendation 3 (Responsive): Prioritize systemic traffic calming and pedestrian safety improvements in all neighborhoods, responding to community-identified “hot spots” and ensuring that investments in sidewalks and crossings are equitably distributed.

• Recommendation 4 (Dynamic): Continuously invest in the “invisible infrastructure” of the city, including high-speed broadband, water systems, and sewer maintenance, to ensure reliability and resilience for all residents and businesses.

Theme 3: Sustainability Leading as responsible stewards of our natural and financial environment.

Selected Directional Recommendations:

• Recommendation 2 (Dynamic): Accelerate the implementation of the Climate Action Plan, focusing on systemic adoption of renewable energy, expansion of green infrastructure, and city-wide waste reduction programs.

• Recommendation 3 (Responsive): Actively protect, enhance, and expand the city’s natural assets, including the tree canopy, parks, and waterways, ensuring all residents have equitable access to high-quality green space.

Theme 4: Community and Belonging Fostering a vibrant, connected, and inclusive community where everyone belongs.

Selected Directional Recommendations:

• Recommendation 2 (Dynamic): Foster a thriving and diverse local economy by supporting small businesses, simplifying processes for entrepreneurs, and actively recruiting restaurants, retail, and arts organizations that create “third places” for community connection.

Theme 5: Housing and Affordability Ensuring a diverse and attainable range of housing options for all.

Selected Directional Recommendations:

• Recommendation 2 (Dynamic): Systematically increase the diversity and supply of “missing middle” housing by incentivizing and updating zoning to support the development of duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, and accessory dwelling units (ADUs).

• Recommendation 3 (Dynamic): Expand and promote programs that protect existing affordable units (both market-rate and subsidized) from conversion and strengthen renter stability.

• Recommendation 4 (Responsive): Address systemic barriers to building wealth by developing and promoting accessible and equitable homeownership programs, co-designed with and targeted to support first-time homebuyers and BIPOC residents.

Leading with Love: A Vision of Connection for St. Louis Park 4.0

The authors invite the City of St. Louis Park to consider the following commitments.

Community Pillar 1: Spaces to Belong, Place to Call Home

Actionable Strategies:

• “First Look” Policy: Partner with land trusts to give income-qualified families an exclusive window to bid on starter homes before corporate investors.

• “Fixer-Upper” & “Senior Safety” Grants: A matching grant program for essential repairs (HVAC, insulation) for young families, and accessibility retrofits (ramps, grab bars) for seniors aging in place.

• Diversify the Middle: Update zoning to incentivize owner-occupied condos and townhomes (triplexes/duplexes) as a bridge between renting and the single-family market.

Community Pillar 2: Community Thriving and Neighborhood Hearts.

Actionable Strategies:

• “Neighborhood Corner” Zoning: Create overlays that permit low-impact micro-retail (bakeries, coffee) in specific residential nodes, strictly regulated to protect peace while promoting connection.

• Adaptive Reuse Grants: Incentivize the conversion of historic/underused structures (e.g., old service stations) into community gathering spaces.

• Main Street Micro-Pilots: Test temporary pop-up commercial zones in parks or intersections to gauge community interest before building permanently

Community Pillar 3: Holistic Safety and Infrastructure

Actionable Strategies:

• Intergenerational Service Corps: Create a civic program pairing youth (seeking service hours/credits) with seniors for snow shoveling and yard work—building safety through relationships.

• Universal Design Audits: Review infrastructure for “Senior Usability” (shaded seating, smooth walking loops, longer crosswalk times) to ensure elders can move freely and safely.

• Maintain and Build Upon an Inclusive Workplace: Develop and/or maintain support at all levels across all departments for attracting and retaining BIPOC leaders. This may include, but is not limited to, internship programs for local BIPOC students to build a leadership pipeline, regular surveys for existing staff to identify BIPOC staff perspectives, and valuing the often ‘invisible work’ of BIPOC staff.

Community Pillar 4: Environmental Stewardship

Actionable Strategies:

• “Living Lawns” Ordinance: Ensure city codes protect and encourage native landscapes and pollinator gardens, replacing punitive “weed” ordinances with educational “managed landscape” guidelines.

• Culturally Relevant Urban Ag: Allocate plots in community gardens specifically for culturally relevant crops, turning these spaces into cross-cultural exchange hubs.

• Climate Resilience Cost-Sharing: Launch grants for residents replacing impervious driveways/patios with rain gardens to manage stormwater locally.

Commentary

So many of these themes are topics that I heard about time and time again from residents on the campaign trail. I look forward to seeing how the city will implement these recommendations over the next ten years.

This document provides a solid framework to guide the future of SLP. Vision 4.0 also proposes four community pillars and actionable strategies. I love seeing these public health goals paired with actionable policy ideas. How will the city systematically review and consider these strategies? When various new policies are implemented, how will the city measure its success?