Turkey Farm Website Awaits Residents Input

After a pair of visioning meetings to decide the fate of landmark property, planner David Banisch came to the conclusion that more outreach is necessary to settle the long-standing debate.

That outreach is being done through a new website solely devoted to the Turkey Farm Visioning project.

The website came about after Banisch saw a weakness in the data from the first two visioning meetings.

"One of the things that occurred to me was that the two crowds themselves tended to be older residents of the community," Banisch said. "And younger age groups weren’t in attendance. In that regard they weren’t able to provide comments."

The site is designed to solicit feedback on the future land uses and development of the Larison’s Corner Turkey Farm property. Residents can view and comment on documents and media from the two public visioning sessions held in December, they can also visit the interactive PPGIS map of the Larison’s Corner property to view comments posted to the map by other community members and add their own comments and photos and they can go to the dedicated discussion page to leave a public comment or start a discussion.

The goal of the website, according to Banisch, is to engage the younger members of the Chester community.

"The younger segment of the population tends to be more mobile, they certainly represent the very important part of the discretionary income that's available in the community," Banisch said. "The younger segment of the population tends to be more mobile, they certainly represent the very important part of the discretionary income that's available in the community. Their lifestyle choices are voiced through their mobility; they go places when they want to go places, when their kids want to go places they go places. They know where they're going and why they're going. I think it would useful to the process to hear from them."