Empire Master Planning: 'Getting to the Values'

The call is out to anyone who lives, works or plays in Empire to help steer the future growth of this increasingly popular tourism hub.

The village is in the process of updating its master plan, which was adopted in 2019. Used by municipalities across the country, master plans are intended to provide long-term vision and guidance for civic officials as they adopt policies around land use, utilities, transportation and much more.

In addition to several upcoming opportunities to provide input in person, a survey is available online or in hard copy form at the Glen Lake Community Library or the village DPW offices. Among many other things, the detailed survey asks people to rank their priorities within the village.   

“We're doing everything we can to get as many responses to that survey as possible,” village trustee, street administrator and master plan committee member Maggie Bacon tells The Ticker. “Both resident and visitor voices are incredibly important in terms of what we're going to look at in the next five to ten years.”

The village is looking to retain its “small-town philosophy” while best preparing itself to handle future growth, Bacon says. The survey is designed to suss out what residents and visitors feel are the most important facets of the Empire experience so that they can be enhanced and preserved.

“The survey is really important because it gets to the values that people have of Empire, and I think that’s something that many municipalities lose out on when they do something like this,” she says. “This is a community-driven focus.”

Brad Lonberger is a professional planner who is consulting with the village on the process. A clear and detailed master plan is invaluable for those in and outside of the community, he says.

“This sets expectations of what the community desires and what the vision is, so developers aren't coming in blind when they try to propose a development," he tells The Ticker. "It also sets expectations for the village council and the planning commission on what the community has said they wanted, so it doesn't become a rogue council that approves or disapproves based on their whims."

The master plan will also look on a smaller scale at individual parcels, Lonberger said, something not always done with municipal plans.

“We'll be looking at some of the larger vacant tracts or significant buildings in the community and talking about what could be done with those and what the community would like to see out of them,” he says. “The schoolhouse or the hardware store, for instance, looking at what those uses could be and what the community might support or incentivize if a developer came in and offered to do a project there.”

This update to the master plan will also include some key elements left out of the initial 2019 plan, Bacon and Lonberger say.

“It was really comprehensive, but we kind of lost sight at some point of holding ourselves accountable for those goals,” Walton says. “We want to have goals and timelines and ways…to make this a reality.”

Empire has been in the news recently as it wrangles with how to regulate short-term rentals. While the master plan likely won’t provide final answers to this dilemma, it can help guide the discussion going forward.

“We talk about short-term rentals and zoning and a lot of different things that we…may not have a solution for, but some of the solutions may be to continue the dialogue so that way we can reach a compromise,” Lonberger says. “We want to make sure that we're documenting everything that we're hearing and that the village has the tools it needs to move forward with additional conversations or planning that they might need to do.”

It's also worth noting, Lonberger says, that issues like short-term rentals can’t be examined in a vacuum. A good master plan can get to the bottom of why the issue is arising in the first place.

“As we look at something like short-term rentals, we also have to look at root causes. Obviously there's a tourism element to it and it's lucrative. But there's also people who can't afford to maintain the properties on their current income, and they have to use short-term rentals to make their lending work,” he says. “So we've got to look at housing affordability and housing options.”

Beyond the survey, public involvement opportunities include:

Thursday, Aug 1: Open House from 4 pm-6 pm at St. Philip Neri Church Parish Hall.

Thursday, Aug 1: Village Council and Planning Commission education session from 6 pm-8 pm at the Glen Lake Library in Empire.

Thursday, Aug 29: Open House from 4 pm-6 pm, Township Hall on Front Street.

Thursday, Aug. 29: Village Council and Planning Commission Education Session, 6 pm-8 pm, Township Hall on Front Street.

Thursday, Sept. 16: Village Council and Planning Commission final recommendations meeting from 6 pm-8 pm at the township hall on Front Street.