On Thursday, April 25, 2024, the Hudson City Council and Planning Commission held a joint special workshop and work session from 7:00 PM to approximately 9:51 PM at City Hall to review the 2024 Draft Comprehensive Plan. The meeting included the steering committee, staff, and elected officials. The steering committee presented the plan's development, timeline, community input, and key recommendations, followed by extensive discussion and feedback from the Planning Commission and City Council.
Presentation of the Draft Comprehensive Plan
The steering committee (Rebecca, Jesse, Nick, Emily, Greg) outlined the 18-month process, beginning in December 2022. The plan is defined by the city charter as the operative growth management policy guiding physical development and capital improvements. The committee included 17 residents (up to 19 at times) with diverse views. Community engagement included a statistically valid survey with 614 responses (goal 400), a 95% confidence level, and a 20% response rate—above average. Additional input came from a general survey, focus groups, pop-up events, and online engagement via Let's Talk Hudson. The overall satisfaction with quality of life in Hudson was 93–94%, far above typical community averages (60–70%).
Community Demographics and Insights
Community Values and Vision
Top community values from the survey: safety, Hudson Public Schools, downtown, parks/open space, sidewalks/walkability, shops/restaurants, and overall sense of community. The vision statement emphasizes maintaining high quality of life, prioritizing safety and green space preservation, protecting downtown character, and ensuring growth consistent with community values.
Future Land Use Map
The steering committee created a future land use map with desired uses for each parcel. Only a few changes were recommended: public works building on Hudson Drive, retail commercial at the Jo-Ann property (from industrial), rezoning Martin Drive back to residential, and focus areas for deeper study: downtown property (public space and residential), YDC property (maintain as passive open space until a transformative office user presents itself), and the SR 91 corridor (streetscape enhancements, gateway emphasis at southern border).
Implementation Plan
The implementation chapter is organized into five sections (land use, housing/economy, mobility/infrastructure, parks/open space, city services/government) with time frames, costs, and project partners. Key themes: architectural design standards, single-story homes/first-floor masters, non-vehicular access, accessible playground, and a community/recreation center (to be determined via feasibility study).
Planning Commission and Council Feedback
I love that just for a visit. Hey, it is 7 p.m. on April 25th, and I would like to invite everybody to a joint meeting of the City Council special workshop, Planning Commission workshop joined with us the steering committee as well. So the mayor is out tonight, so I'll be filling in. And from here we'll move straight into item three, which is discussion items to Ford 004 for the 2004 draft comprehensive plan. And I believe I'll hand it over to Greg or Tom, whoever. I think we'll let the committee chair the um yeah, and just um want to thank you for the opportunity to get together and review the plan this evening, and we also want to the committee wants to thank the staff for their support and putting together plan. Um as you are aware, we um the committee currently has 17 residents. Um it's been up to 19 with uh diverse views, um, and we've been meeting over the past 18 months. Um this, along with the input that we've received from the community, has um provided the group with lots of opportunity to gate engage in vigorous and lengthy debate on the visions and goals and objectives that are included in the plan. Um the committee has given detailed and careful consideration to all the input that we received from the community, and we think we have put together a plan that reflects the values of the citizens of Hudson and provides a guide for the next 10 years. And Jesse, did you want to make any comments? Okay, um, so just by way of agenda, um, what we plan to do tonight is you know, give Greg's or Nick actually is gonna give um an overview slide of the scope of the plan and how it's how the plan is used. Um I'm gonna go through the timeline and also review some of the existing conditions that are included in the plan. Jesse's gonna talk about the survey and the community feedback that we've gotten, and then um uh the remainder of the slides uh Nick and Emily are gonna come cover, and then we'll have time for discussion, hopefully. So that's the plan. Um so can we go to the first slide? Yep, go ahead, Nick. Yeah, I can move us along the on a on a high level. Uh the comprehensive plan, it's it's primarily discussed defined in in the um uh charter, and there are a couple sentences that I'll just read verbatim that that describe it. It's it's the operative growth management policy for the municipality and shall guide council and taking action with respect to the physical development of the municipality and expenditures for capital improvements. Um so it's wide-ranging, it's basically saying it's all physical development within the city. Um it's also it's a key resource as planning commission knows it's baked into the planning commission's review criteria. Uh we reference it essentially every meeting when we're making decisions on applications. Uh the plan per the charter is is updated and reviewed every 10 years. So uh we're at that mark now. And for the overall adoption process, which we're moving into that stage now, uh, that that operates typically like our our rezonings or text amendments, so you probably know that flow by now, but we've uh laid out that possible timeline in the memo that we had for everybody, uh, just on a high level of what those dates and in order could look like. So that that's really it on a high level. Um I will turn it back to Rebecca. Sure. Okay. Um this is kind of the project timeline that we've been working through, and as I said, we've been meeting for 18 months. Um we had our first meeting in December of 2022, um, where we've had our project kicked off. And the first couple meetings we spent, you know, reviewing past plans and looking at other plans from other cities and things like that. Um, we then moved into the inform stage where we um reviewed the existing conditions, and I'll go over some of those in the next slide. Um in the third phase, we started to engage the public um through surveys, workshops, focus groups, pop-up meetings. We had some people come and present to the committee. Um so we were kind of gathering information from the community, and Jesse's gonna go into that in more detail. Um following that we began the developing the plan stage, and I guess throughout the third and fourth stage, we had a lot of extra meetings just because you know we were debating and um you know interpreting the survey and things like that. So um we um you know had a lot of extra meetings, I guess, during that time period where we were formulating the vision and objectives of the plan. Um so and then now, as Nick said, we're in the implementation stage, so we're kind of finalizing the plan, and um so that's the time that we've been working through. And go ahead. So this is some of the community insights, and it's pretty interesting. Our current population is 23,110. Um in 2010, it was 22,262. So you can see there's been some growth in the town. Um as far as the makeup of the population, 15% are seniors, 30% of the households are empty nesters or people that have no children living in the home, and then 45% are young professionals, um, and also you know, potentially have children living in the home. Um some of the other things that were kind of interesting, and we looked at the median household income. So in Hudson, the median is 154,400, which compares to 64,000 roughly for Summit County and the state of Ohio. Um the average household size is 2.79 people.