Strategic Plan
Introduction
The City of Mountain Iron has recently completed a number of planning efforts including, a comprehensive land use plan and a redevelopment plan for “Old Town Mountain Iron”. In addition, the City of Mountain Iron has a five-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) in place that details anticipated capital expenditures for the City.
The City of Mountain Iron is discussing various potential projects that likely will impact future development patterns. The City identified a need to review these projects and discuss their desirability and the priority each project has for the City. In addition, each of the projects will likely require financial support from the City in order to move forward. In this light, it is important to discuss how to best utilize City resources to ensure investment of public dollars will help move the City forward in a desirable direction and will bring the intended benefits for the City.
The future of the old down town versus the new development that is taking place south of Highway 169 is a central issue in the overall discussion of allocating City resources. The Comprehensive land use plan status the desire to designate the Old town as an historic district and to reclaim and enhance historic structures to preserve the community’s history and ethnic heritage and to promote tourism. The Comprehensive plan also recommends that Mountain Iron provide a new town center modeled on a traditional town with characteristics such as a Main street and a civic community center complex. Steps have been taken in this direction with the relocation of the City Hall to the current location and location of the Elementary school in its vicinity.
The following summary report provides an overview of the discussion that took place over three meetings with City Staff and Council Members. Summaries of the first two individual meetings are included in Appendix A. The comments from the third meeting are incorporated in the summary report. The report includes a brief discussion of the planning process and an overview of some of the general conclusions. This is followed by a discussion of three topical areas, housing, economic development and community infrastructure and services needs. Each of the topical areas includes a discussion of the key issues, the projects identified, opportunities and barriers for project implementation and action steps needed to move forward. The report will finalize with a summary of the project priorities as they were ranked at the third meeting.