Planning Process Under Way For Superior Outdoor Recreation Plan

The Wisconsin Coastal Management Program recently awarded more than $24,000 to Superior. The money will be used to form a comprehensive outdoor recreation plan for the city. The city will also contribute around $25,000 to develop the plan over the next year.

The city will form a committee made up of residents and government officials to examine the 24 parks in Superior. Mayor Jim Paine said they want to identify how the city could use new or existing spaces to better connect residents and visitors to the outdoors.

“We invest a lot of money in outdoor recreation and rightly so. It is one of our most important assets and probably the single largest contributor to quality of life in this community,” he said. “It’s why people move here. It’s why people stay here. It is in our interest to make sure that the resource spending and the resources we have are used to benefit as many people as possible in the city.”

The city spends around $1.4 million on parks and recreation each year. Communication with citizens will be a high priority for the committee, according to Paine. The committee will begin a year-long process of collecting surveys and holding listening sessions with citizens about existing parks and recreation spaces. Paine hopes the plan will help Superior grow and maintain its population.

“When people are looking for that great job in the 21st century, a lot of the time they are not just looking for the place to work,” he said. “They’re looking for the great place to live. I believe Superior is that community, but we need to make sure that it is doing that for as many people as possible, and it’s still very fun to live and work here.”

The city plans to hold several listening sessions over the course of the next year. Officials hope to have a comprehensive outdoor recreation plan in place by June next year.