The Harmony Economic Development Authority (EDA) is hosting the final public input meeting in its second series of “Experience Harmony.” The program designed to gather ideas on how to continue make Harmony the best place to live, work, and play over the next one to 10, or even 20 years.
This final meeting will be held on Wednesday, May 16, 2018, at 5:30 p.m. at the Harmony Golf Club, 545 4th Street NE, Harmony, Minn., and will last about two hours. All members of the public are welcome and encouraged to participate! Light appetizers will be provided.
Topics discussed at this meeting will include new housing, rehabilitation of existing housing, commuter/transportation issues, cost of living, the environment/energy sustainability, new business attraction, technology advancement in the community, recreation amenity improvements, and promoting the community. Anyone with thoughts on how the community could address these issues should attend!
In the first public input session held during the fall of 2017, community members gathered to brainstorm projects, ideas, and goals for Harmony — no idea was too big or too small. From that gathering the EDA utilized the input received and conducted a community-wide survey which resulted in candid responses concerning Harmony’s strengths, challenges, and opportunities. Based on the feedback of this final meeting, projects will be prioritized for implementation. The goal of this placemaking process is to make sure that Harmony continues to listen, plan, and move forward as “The Biggest Little Town in Southeast Minnesota” — the Harmony EDA wants to continually move our community goals forward.
The first Experience Harmony series was held in early 2014, shortly after major regional initiatives such as Mayo Clinic’s Destination Medical Center was announced, and was a great success. At that time community members wanted to work together to better harness the regional projected economic growth. Their answer was the creation of the Experience Harmony process which was designed to gather and prioritize public input and resources to best achieve short and long term goals.
In the first series, community members met over the course of two meetings to dream about what would make Harmony a better place to live, work, and play. Project ideas ranged from building a community garden to digging a lake. During the second meeting, participants took those ideas to try to tackle the basic project feasibility, develop conceptual work plans, and identify potential project champions to move the projects forward. From concepts that came forward during the public input meetings and a community survey, five projects were identified as priorities. Four of the projects, attracting a new day care center, build community gardens, hold career fairs for Fillmore Central high school students, and city landscaping beautification, were completed.
For questions or to RSVP, please call Chris Giesen, Harmony EDA Coordinator, (507) 886-2846 or email him at chris.giesen@cedausa.com.
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