On June 8, 2021, City Council confirmed appointments to the Downtown Steering Committee (DSC) to embark on the initial phases of adopting a Downtown Plan. The 12-member citizen-lead committee commenced with their first meeting on June 30, 2021. During these initial meetings, the DSC requested consultant services that would supplement and facilitate planning efforts needed to produce the Downtown Plan. This is the impetus for the consideration of this item.
The Downtown area, which is currently referred to as the Central Business District, encompasses approximately 206 acres and is generally located at the northeast quadrant of McDermott Road and US Highway 75. The last comprehensive planning effort for the Downtown was completed approximately 20 years ago.
The scope of the entire Downtown Plan is expected to occur in three phases as follows:
- Phase 1 - Information Gathering
- Phase 2 - Visioning and Community Engagement
- Phase 3 - Executing the Vision (Note: Not included in the scope of this contract)
The DSC has completed most of Phase 1, and is relying upon the use of consultant services to supplement their data collection efforts and produce a summary report for City Council in order to conclude this initial phase. It is expected that Phase 1 will conclude by December 2021. The majority of the services provided by the consultant will occur in Phase 2 efforts, which is expected to conclude by July 2022. It should be noted that Phase 3 efforts are not included in the scope of this contract, and are mentioned previously only to provide context to the overall efforts of the Downtown Plan.
The primary focus of the Phase 2 efforts will be community engagement. Since the viability of any plan is greatly tied to the stakeholder ownership of that plan, it will be critical to engage with multiple facets of our community. Both the number of events and the varied platforms used to reach our residents will ensure that we obtain balanced input representative of numerous groups.
The secondary focus of Phase 2 will be the development of three concept plan options that are grounded with high-level economic impact analysis. It should be clear that these concept plan options will be the result of a collaborative effort by all stakeholders in the community. The consultant will serve primarily in the capacity of a facilitator to ensure that this will be the City of Allen's vision. The deliverable for the conclusion of Phase 2 will be three concept plan options that include a high-level economic impact analysis that will be used to inform the direction to occur in Phase 3.
On August 5, 2021, the City issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) inviting teams to submit responses. On August 19, 2021, a Pre-Proposal meeting was conducted and a total of 22 attendees were present representing approximately 12 different firms. On August 26, 2021, the City received a total of six responses to the RFP:
- Catalyst Commercial, Inc.
- Future iQ, Inc.
- Gensler
- JHP Architecture
- Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc.
- Stantec
An initial evaluation of these six respondents was conducted by an 8-member team consisting of members of the DSC as well as City staff. These evaluations were conducted independently using criteria outlined in the RFP, and resulted in a group of finalists to be further interviewed. Of these initial six respondents, four teams were invited to participate in an interview:
- Catalyst Commercial, Inc.
- Gensler
- Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc.
- Stantec
This interview panel consisted of the initial 8-member team as well as an additional two members of the DSC. Each interview team was independently evaluated by the team. Ultimately, Stantec Consulting Services was selected as the highest scoring team.