Penhorn/Woodlawn Community Vision
Engagement Process

 - Summary -

The Penhorn/Woodlawn Visioning project was introduced to the community on May 22, 2008 at Alderney Elementary School. The 45 attendees shared what they value about their community and aspirations for the future.  Potential Community Liaison Group (CLG) member self-identification and selection resulted in varying backgrounds and geographic representation of the Vision area.

A focal point of the community is the current Penhorn Mall site re-development opportunity which is identified in the Regional Plan as an Urban Local Centre. The CLG established a physical presence on the site in a vacant building on the Penhorn Mall property that served as a meeting place and headquarters for their work.

At their first meeting on September 15, 2008 the newly formed CLG established a Vision area boundary and developed strategies for engaging the larger community for their aspirations of how they wish their community to look and feel over the next 25 years.

In addition to weekly visioning project meetings, the CLG engaged area schools, businesses, and neighbourhood groups, as well as organizations beyond the vision boundary throuogh a variety of methods including personal interviews, survey questionnaires, group discussions and workshops, and shared information via internet based resources including a project webpage and the social networking site FaceBook.

Throughout the visioning process the CLG stressed the importance of continuous community feedback opportunities provided via, open meetings, newspaper advertisements, media releases, the internet and CLG member contacts.

Through the application of an Appreciative Inquiry approach, community strengths, challenges and opportunities were identified by respondents to two public forums on November 24 and 29. The assets and wishes resulting from these forums, combined with survey and questionnaire results, assisted the CLG in developing the content of four themed workshops held in February/March 2009.

The themes of natural environment, transportation, future residential and commercial needs, and public spaces and services were explored with the assistance of visual preference surveys.  Additional workshop tools included participant’s hands-on modelling using Lego blocks and aerial mapping to develop land use and building form design concepts for the Penhorn Mall site redevelopment.

On May 2, 2009 the CLG organized a Penhorn Lake clean-up resulting in an invaluable benefit to the environment and further building upon the theme of rekindling memories and creating new ones through community engagement.

The draft Penhorn/Woodlawn Vision document was presented to the public over two sessions on May 23, 2009 at the Penhorn Sobeys Community Room. In addition to comments received at the release event, stakeholder feedback was received over the following two week period and considered in the review of the final Vision.

During the community engagement exercises, while encouraging the community to “vision”, the CLG communicated the scope of community visioning in relation to the Regional Plan.  Accordingly, the Penhorn/Woodlawn Communinty Liaison Group is confident they have prepared the foundation for the Vision Implementation Committee to continue with the development and implementation of the Penhorn/Woodlawn Vision Action Plan.