The community is being asked envision what they want Granby to look like in the next 10 to 20 years.

Work is underway for Granby’s new comprehensive plan, and a big part of that is coming from community feedback. On Wednesday, Granby’s town board room was filled with easels holding up posters for folks to give input on the plan, called “Imagine Granby.”

Rick Engineering is updating the town’s master plan, which hasn’t changed since 1985. Imagine Granby’s project manager Britt Palmberg briefly explained the process to the large group of community members.

“We’re looking for the broadest input possible including this meeting and the survey and other activities for the next several months,” Palmberg said.

A comprehensive plan provides key goals to guide a town board over the next several years, acting as a guideline for how to grow and deal with several aspects of the town. It also serves as a foundation for different town departments to do their planning.

The updated comprehensive plan will come with recommendations for updates to Granby’s land use code, which, if approved by the town board, would help guide the day-to-day developments in Granby.

The plan focuses on eight main areas: the overarching community vision, future land use and development, housing, traffic and transportation, parks and open space, infrastructure, public safety, and downtown planning.

Each section had its own area on Wednesday at town hall, with the respective representative of those areas from Rick Engineering available to answer questions and take feedback. The community members were encouraged to leave sticky notes and write ideas on the large printed maps around the room.

Palmberg added that they are about a third of the way through the comprehensive planning process.

“Really after tonight and the next few weeks, we’re going to start gathering the input from you all and going back as a team and really developing sets of ideas and concepts for consideration from the community,” he said.

The team will come back in a few months for another round of community feedback, likely at another large open house in April. The third round will nail down more details in August, and the plan will hopefully be finalized by the end of the year.

The open house on Wednesday had some of the preliminary Imagine Granby survey results, though the survey remains open through Feb. 15. More than 600 people have responded so far, with about 56% being fulltime residents and 44% being second homeowners.

“Family focused/community minded,” “retaining a small town feel,” and being “a community focused on recreation opportunities” were the top three values voted by survey takers to guide Granby’s vision for the future as of Jan. 17. A word cloud depicting the perception of Granby today had “destination,” “growing,” and “changing” as some of the most commonly used words.

According to those same preliminary results, responders most wanted future land development to focus on parks and open space, residential and mixed use.

The group’s community assessment also highlighted the housing crisis across Grand County hurting the economy and causing housing insecurity, which has been worsened by a lack of supply, the recent fires and major influx of full- and part-time residents during the pandemic.

The majority of survey responders as of Jan. 17 said that Granby needed more starter homes, single family homes and apartments, citing a need for both a variety of housing and affordability of housing.

When it comes to growth, survey responders so far were split nearly down the middle over the approach recommended to take toward Granby’s growth. Exactly 46% of responders recommended carefully managing future development even if it means growth is slower, while 46.1% recommended ensuring development meets community needs, is well-designed and tied to water and sewer capacity.

Palmberg emphasized that community input will continue to be taken throughout the process.

“If you’ve missed the first few months, there’s certainly a lot more time to go here if you’d like to provide your input on the ideas we come up with over the next few months,” he said.

The survey is open through Feb. 15 at ImagineGranby.com, along with an online map to leave specific recommendations, a community engagement wall and access to relevant documents.