The City of Kennesaw hosted an open house to present the proposed Comprehensive Plan to the public at the Ben Robertson Community Center on January 18, 2017.

The plan results from surveys and an open house conducted on November 15, 2016 and details how the city will break up its budget. Most of the proposed ideas reflect a need for new retail and residential development; data from the previous open house showed a longing for restaurants and retail as well as the majority of the budget spent on economic development, public safety, and transportation networks.

“I’ve been here for seven years and just in the past five years they have changed so much and developed so much especially in the downtown area,” local citizen Paul Goulet said.

The open house also asked visitors to provide ideas for renovating the currently unused Martha J. Moore Center, where to add new outdoor trails, and where to zone for residential developments versus business. Corp Engineering also used the event to propose adding large signs to redirect truck traffic from city centers.

“This is our plan for placing veritable message signs to redirect truck traffic primarily trying to keep traffic away from downtown. So we’re piggybacking on the comprehensive plan to get people talking about the placement, the look of the signs, because part of being a resident is dealing with traffic,” Dan Dobry of Corp Engineering said.

The city will present all data collected from the January open house in April and plan to begin instituting changes that month as well.

“We plan to start all of this in April and May and we want to have it all finished by June,” Zoning Administrator Darryl Simmons said.