GENEVA COMPREHENSIVE PLAN AND COMMUNITY DECISION-making GUIDE

City of Geneva, NY

Which investments will help a challenged small city leverage its incredible assets?

SUMMARY

Geneva sits on the shore of picturesque Seneca Lake in the heart of New York's Finger Lakes wine country and is home to a highly-regarded liberal arts college. It also has a number of quaint neighborhoods and a revitalizing downtown with many more fantastic restaurants than a town of Geneva's size should expect. But the city also suffers from a late 20th century legacy of economic dislocation and disinvestment.

czb first came to Geneva in 2008 to analyze the city’s housing markets and provide recommendations to strengthen conditions and marketability across its many neighborhoods. We returned in 2015 to develop a new comprehensive plan that would build upon the success of the ongoing work being done in Geneva’s neighborhoods. Working with a 23-member steering committee, we facilitated a process to define the city's vision and craft a plan focused on improving conditions in Geneva’s downtown, neighborhoods, and along its lakefront and key corridors.

CITY OF GENEVA COMPREHENSIVE PLAN AND COMMUNITY DECISION-MAKING GUIDE

Geneva's Priorities

Geneva's 2015 comprehensive plan includes five broad, long-term priorities.

"So many comprehensive plans are long lists of future projects with little grounding in market or operational reality. The czb plan focused on core values and planning principles as a foundation for future investment and organizational decision making. "

- Matt Horn | Former City Manager

Post-Project Impacts

Based on czb’s 2008 report, the City of Geneva established the Office of Neighborhood Initiatives and opened the Geneva Neighborhood Resource Center (GNRC) in a formerly vacant downtown space. Though it has since closed its doors and moved operations back to City Hall, the GNRC was the face of the community's revitalization efforts, providing organizational resources for fledgling neighborhood associations, offering access to funding programs and design assistance for rehab projects, and hosting meetings and events related to discussing and planning the city's future.

Visit the Geneva Neighborhood Resource Center

Planning is Paying Off

After the adoption of the 2015 comprehensive plan, Geneva went on to win a $10 million downtown grant from the State of New York. Geneva’s City Manager told local reporters that going through the comprehensive planning process and having access to data from the czb plan substantially bolstered the city’s grant application. The grant will help Geneva build on the priorities outlined in the Comprehensive Plan.