Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette Residents take part in a workshop for Hancock’s master plan at the Houghton County Arena in April. Consultants presented findings from the two April sessions at a Hancock Planning Commission meeting Monday night.

HANCOCK — The planning firm that conducted two workshops with Hancock residents last month for the city’s master plan presented its findings at Monday’s Hancock Planning Commission meeting.

James Kilborn, associate planner for the Grand Rapids-based Progressive AE, walked the commission through its findings, taken from sessions that drew an estimated 90 people.

The company is helping to develop the city’s master plan, which is updated every five years.

Progressive AE developed some overarching themes from the event.

Residents highly value Hancock’s access to the natural spaces of the Keweenaw, and its location on the “sunny side” of the Portage. They saw opportunities to build on that through encouraging local gardening, clean energy and other sustainable development, and by expanding access to the waterfront.

They want downtown Hancock to be a walkable area full of businesses, restaurants and housing.

They’d also like more all-season amenities, and safer and more accessible ways to get around to those places. Several residents brought up the idea of expanding the city’s transit system.

“During the winter months, it can be hard being indoors all the time, and when you are, you want to be going to different places, change the scenery,” Kilborn said.

In one activity, residents placed color-coded dots on a map of the city: green for areas where they liked spending time, blue for key destinations, yellow for places needing improvements and red for areas they avoided.

Fittingly, the places they liked most were community spaces such as Quincy Green, the Navy Street trail, parks and other natural areas.

The list of places to avoid was dominated by intersections, in particular Quincy and Reservation streets.

“A lot of people mentioned that as a place they avoid, because being on foot, it’s pretty inhospitable,” Kilborn said.

The feedback touched on themes the city has seen before from other studies, Planning Commission members said. Chair Kurt Rickard did see places where the findings expanded on what they expected: residents’ desire for connectivity and making the city accessible on foot and by bike.

“I think there’s definitely things we can do as part of our master plan to improve those,” he said. “It’s always been in our plan, but I think we can maybe put more emphasis on it.”

City Manager Mary Babcock asked if the city’s traffic issues should be included in the master plan, since the city’s two main streets are along U.S. 41., where changes require Michigan Department of Transportation approval.

“We’ve done a recent streetscaping of Hancock to try to alleviate some of the issues, and we’ve put out bumpouts, and we’ve petitioned the State of Michigan multiple times for crosswalks, and we’ve had no success,” she said. “…It just seems like a point of failure to me.”

Kilborn said it was outlining the vision for downtown, and how the road design influences it.

Progressive had done similar work with Grand Haven and Lansing.

“A lot of the time MDOT will do what MDOT wants, when we as a community have a master plan that reflects our desires, that kind of gives us leverage going into it and saying ‘These are the designs we’d like,’ and working with them towards that end.”

Planning Commission member Susan Burack said she’d like to see the plan explore how to take advantage of the region’s lengthy winter.

“There’s an organization called Winter Cities that has lot of ideas of how to make winter more appealing in the city,” she said.

Over the next couple of months, Progressive AE will refine the goals and present a map of future land use. They will come back to town around September and do a second community event, where they present key recommendations and land use ideas to see if residents agree.

They should have a draft of the master plan ready for November. If the planning commission and city council approve, it could be adopted by the end of the year.

In other action, the commission:

• Heard from Babcock the city would be installing a new clock on the intersection of U.S. 41 and M-26 near Gino’s. The council approved the project last year. It was one of the last spearheaded by late Downtown Development Coordinator Deb Mann.

• Tabled two zoning applications: one for an addition at 306 Hancock Street, and one for an expansion of the Houghton County Fair’s exhibit building on the Birch Street side.