County Planning facilitated the Solon Connects plan by bringing together data, community leaders, citizens, and public institutions to craft a plan for action. See below for information about community engagement, public meetings, and the planning process.

Community Engagement

The Solon Connects Plan focused its efforts around community engagement and opportunities for public education, awareness, and options for providing feedback. Community engagement included online surveys, public meetings, focus groups, and other community events to aid the advancement of the master planning process. Obtaining input from diverse cross sections of the entire community was be critical for the success of this plan.

Public Meetings

The Process

The Solon Connects Plan was a collaborative guide developed by County Planning with input from residents, businesses owners, stakeholders, and other interested groups. It is a long-term vision for how the City might improve and expand its multi-modal connectivity options into the future, creating a more sustainable and better-connected network for all users. The planning process consisted of four phases.

Phase 1: Discovery & Analysis

It was necessary to understand current conditions and assets that make Solon unique and to consider that information along with community preferences to help identify the opportunities that exist. This phase included the collection of demographics and other data along with a detailed analysis of the City’s existing land use and infrastructure network, including streets, sidewalks, and trails.

Phase 2: Vision

This phase continued engagement with the community and began to outline a vision – broad based concepts and ideas – for how it wanted to increase access and connectivity in the City of Solon

Phase 3: Recommendations

This phase started to identify specific recommendations that the city and various groups considered in order to accomplish the vision outlined earlier. These goals were designed to address some of the issues as opportunities found during the discovery and analysis phase while working towards the vision outlined by the community.

Phase 4: Implementation & Conclusion

This phase expanded on the goals outlined during the recommendations phase by establishing strategies, policies, responsibilities, and identified potential partners for implementation through funding and grant opportunities. Recommendations were categorized into short and long-term opportunities, charting estimated timelines and priorities for completion.

At the conclusion of this phase County Planning combined all the previous phases into a completed Master Plan document. This document was distributed to the Solon Community and its leadership by County Planning. This document includes all recommendations regarding issues related to land use, zoning, economic development, environment, connectivity, and transportation.