Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette Hancock residents participate in a master plan open house on Sept. 22. James Kilborn of Progressive AE, which is putting together Hancock’s master plan update, briefed the planning Commission on the results of the open house and on proposed changes coming in the new version of the plan.

HANCOCK — The planners putting together Hancock’s master plan presented findings from an open house held last month during Monday’s monthly Planning Commission meeting.

Around 50 residents had used stickers and post-it notes at a series of stations to indicate their views on proposed items during the two-hour session.

James Kilborn of the Grand Rapids-based firm Progressive AE, walked the commission through the results and also talked about proposed changes from the 2018 master plan.

Residents broadly agreed on most points of the vision statement, goals and objectives, where they placed stickers along a spectrum indicating strong disapproval to strong approval. Kilborn recommended dropping one proposed objective — “Implement innovative parking solutions such as mapping existing parking assets and considering shared parking areas” — where responses were equally dispersed along the spectrum.

“A lot of people were on the fence, so I think we go ahead and remove this one,” Kilborn said.

Other objectives, such as increasing connectivity between neighborhoods and the trail system, saw some disagreement but were still largely approved of, Kilborn said. Some of the people with mixed feelings had been worried about having snowmobile traffic in residential areas, he said.

Another activity saw residents indicate what amenities they wanted to see in Hancock. The most popular choice was pedestrian crossings. The stickers were grouped most heavily on Quincy Street, with others on Hancock and White streets.

Other popular options were housing — particularly in former Finlandia buildings — and slower traffic.

In another section devoted to downtown streets, residents overwhelmingly thought speeding and the difficulty of crossing the streets were problems downtown. Mobility in downtown is also made harder by truck deliveries, which can block off lanes of traffic. Residents were mixed on whether parking downtown was difficult, and if more is needed.

Kilborn also discussed how the master plan will be changed from the 2018 version.

In the section on future land use, community input from the public sessions will be incorporated into the discussion of downtown Hancock, along with revitalization strategies and case studies from other communities. Public feedback will also be used to add to the plan’s discussion of waterfront access and connectivity.

The new draft will also discuss Hancock’s status as a Winter City, and ways of embracing the four-season climate. Kilborn listed Edmonton, Canada as a city that’s successfully made winter a core part of its identity.

“We want to pull from what’s been successful in other communities, and we’d really like to incorporate it into this master plan update,” Kilborn said.

Residents were also asked what sustainability means to them. They valued renewable energy sources, reducing dependency on cars through walking and mass transit. They also supported household practices such as recycling, composting, and reducing the amount of water and energy they use.

“I do get the impression a lot of people are interested in not only community gardens, but also native landscaping that’s a little more water conscious,” Kilborn said.

Sustainability, a focus of the 2018 master plan, will be fleshed out with additional information, whether text or graphics, Kilborn said.

Ideas for the arena property, which Hancock purchased earlier this year, included fields for recreational sports, indoor fitness and meeting spaces, and child care.

The master plan will also be updated to reflect developments since the last master plan, such as the Father’s Day Flood and the closure of Finlandia.

Later in the meeting, the Planning Commission rearranged its future meeting schedule to enable the commission to review and approve the new plan prior to the December City Council meeting. The next meeting will take place Dec. 5. That replaces both the scheduled November meeting and the December meeting, which as regularly scheduled would fall on Christmas.