Council, planning commission identify Gallup's top priorities in GMMP, TMP
The top priority emerging from Gallup’s yearlong planning effort for the community’s long-range future won’t come as a surprise to anyone:
“The top priority is more housing, a larger variety of housing, wherever we can get it,” Jessica Lawlis, a lead consultant on the Growth Management Master Plan, said during a joint session between the city council and the planning commission Nov. 14.
The point of the session was to hear how two parallel major planning efforts, the GMMP and the Transportation Master Plan, fit together.
The resulting plans will help guide the city’s efforts to grow, entice new businesses to move into the community and make sure residents can get where they need to go as easily and safely as possible. They will also help to bring a more unified feel to the city.
Consultants from Dekker/Perich/Sabatini, which is working on the GMMP, and Bohannan Huston, which is working on the TMP, described what they have learned as the projects near completion.
“We’re really going to need to ensure that when you have development applications come in front of you for things like zone map amendments and site plans, that they are consistent with the intended character that is outlined in that development scheme and reflecting community desires,” Lawlis said.
Both consulting firms have spent much of the last year doing community meetings and focus groups to get a handle on what Gallupians want. Public participation has been less than they’d hoped for, but residents still have a week left to comment on the GMMP at the project website (gallupgmmp2023.mysocialpinpoint.com). Lawlis said the draft has received few written comments, but each element on the website has had between 50 and 60 page views.
“We feel that the public is seeing it but not necessarily commenting on it,” she said.
As Gallup moves into the future, preserving the community’s history is a priority for many Gallupians.
“There is a sense in the community that there are a lot of great cultural and historic assets that need to be preserved,” Lawlis said.
But residents are also deeply concerned about deteriorating properties and want more programs to help property owners make repairs.
The consultants have worked together on the transportation elements to ensure they capture the community’s concerns without duplicating efforts.
Although 2018 studies of Gallup’s roads indicated they have enough capacity to hold the community through 2050, there are areas where changes may be needed to relieve congestion and traffic delays, BHI senior planner and project manager Derek Webb said.
“In 2018, the roadway network worked perfect [in the model],” Webb said. “That’s probably not the lived experience. It’s probably especially not the lived experience on those two weekends a month when Gallup gets a large influx of people.”
Older models didn’t necessarily give a true representation of how much use some roads get.
“Hassler Valley Road didn’t really pop out in the travel model,” Webb said. “It wasn’t something that [showed up as] ‘Oh, tons of people are going to use this if we improve it.’ But in talking to the community members that showed up, it’s clear that it’s been a conversation throughout history.”
His team is working on the last modules of the TMP and has made them available on the TMP project website.
Both plans are expected to be in final draft form by the end of the year and receive city council approval early next year.
By Holly J. Wagner
Sun Correspondent
